


Who The Hell Is Steve?

by Lsusanna



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Artist Steve Rogers, BAMF everyone, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Christianity, Dark, F/M, HYDRA sucks, Hurt Steve, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Steve Feels, Steve Has Issues, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Steve and Fitz can't use their words, Tony Is a Good Bro, the cold and Steve don't mix, this isn't Stucky-sorry, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-02-20 22:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 24,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2445605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lsusanna/pseuds/Lsusanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers steps into Erskine's machine, and Captain America wages a war against HYDRA.</p><p>James Barnes fell to his death during a mission that should have been routine. </p><p>Steve Rogers' death would be immortalized forever.</p><p>In 2011, James Barnes woke to a different world, reality, life.</p><p>James Barnes remained unaware of the fact that, about a month after he crashed Schmidt's plane into the Arctic, Steve Rogers was found, alive--when history did not cooperate, history was changed.</p><p> </p><p>******</p><p> </p><p>Of course he would pull on the thread.</p><p>It wasn’t an option.</p><p>There was no alternative.</p><p>Steve would never dream of giving up on him, and James wasn’t going to give up on Steve.</p><p>Sam voiced the only choice left.</p><p>“When do we start?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> So I've officially jumped onto the Winter Soldier!Steve bandwagon.

_**"It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead."** _

_**-quoted in 'Kurt Vonnegut: In His Own Words'** _

 

 

James Buchanan Barnes had known Steve Rogers since he had gotten between him and the boy who had claimed the rights to knocking out his front teeth; though, the jerk had failed to realize, they hadn’t yet grown back.

 

It had spiraled from there. Words, thoughts, feelings; man-feelings, the kind you ignore or rub dirt in, but still.

 

Going out with the man was like walking an aggressive Terrier, but that was endearing…most of the time. Slightly sad, that his heart was both too big and too weak for one man, one life, but there was nothing James could do, really, but he could help.

 

There was nothing James could do, but then there was nothing for him to do anymore.

 

He realized, as he shouted the first of many accolades, as the P.O.W.s realized they were finally as home as they could find, as Steve realized he was Captain America, and that he could finally make his difference; that Steve didn’t need him anymore. It was both good and sad.

 

After that, it was all battles won and battles lost; getting used to Steve and getting used to himself-excuse him, Zola’s version. Steve was not the only one who had been _enhanced_.

 

James realized he was hiding. Hiding behind Steve; because who was going to fire Cap’s second in command, Steve Rogers’ best friend; who was going to call him out for being unstable, who was going to look close enough to even see it? He hid behind his aim, too-Zola’s aim; there wasn’t much to judge by, but he _knew_ his vision and his aim was better now-because who was going to discharge one of the SSR’s best snipers, and who was going to take him off a team where he could to the most good?

 

Steve was harder to fool. James hadn’t expected to. But he learned to function, and bite down on the edges of his tongue to stop his screaming when he woke up from a nightmare of whirrs and clicks and burning, and Steve didn’t really need him anymore, but James supposed he needed Steve, and he was there, the good friend and bleeding heart that he always was.

 

Functioning was good.

 

It worked, and it grew, and soon when he smiled around the Commando’s campfires it was more than mordant, more than secondary.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

James Buchanan Barnes fell down out the side of a train, Zola’s train, and wasn’t that just perfect?

 

James Buchanan fell out of a train and down a ravine and into an icy Alpine river. He didn’t die on impact, because Zola hadn’t let him.

 

James Buchanan Barnes slowly drowned.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“I won’t stop till all of HYDRA is either dead or captured.”

 

“You won’t be alone.”

 

Schmidt had made it personal. That was his first mistake.

 

Underestimating just _how_ personal, well-that would be his second.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Steven Grant Rogers saved the free world.

 

Steven Grant Rogers kept the owner of that deli, and the wizened man who owned the bakery and used to send him home with more bread than his mother’s money could buy, from getting blown to bits.

 

Steven Grant Rogers’ serum kept him from dying. It also kept him aware.

 

The crash was as violent as he had expected it to be, but much more jarring.

 

No amount of preparation could have ever let him begin to fathom the sheer _cold_.

 

Steven Grant Rogers didn’t know how long he was in that plane before things faded to black, mercifully black, but it felt like weeks.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

A Russian ship found the wreckage of a HYDRA plane approximately four weeks after Captain America’s disappearance.

 

Inside, the crewmember whose lot it was to play explorer found the missing Captain, half-frozen and half-dead and barely breathing.

 

 

 

******

 

 

Captain Rogers should not have survived; but he did. It baffled the scientists who were lucky enough to have the proper clearance.

 

The arm was a small price to pay, really, frostbitten and bloodied and fractured in several places and too far gone to save. Not a loss at all, if one considered the technological marvel that replaced it, far ahead of its time.

 

Far too useful, far too effective, once the man woke. The will and heart of Captain Steven Rogers was the stuff of legend, the subject of comic books, the attribute that had stolen the hearts of the Americans.

 

Convenient, then, that HYDRA had gotten word of the Captain’s recovery, and had taken the responsibility of subduing that heart away from the USSR. Very convenient; HYDRA’s first offer had been sufficient enough, the price that was finally reached beyond satisfactory, their willingness to pay surprising.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Steve remembered pain, and Zola using cold, weaponizing it more than it already was. There was hunger and thirst and torture, an overabundance of the latter. He remembered never being given enough time to really heal.

 

Then remembering became nonexistent.

 

There was an amalgamation of some kind; he didn’t know, but the cold seeped inside.

 

They looked at him like he was the punchline of a private joke.

 

Pierce tried to appeal to his humanity. The Asset accepted it, because to not was to argue with a superior, but in any case, Pierce gave explanations Zola never did. He gave the Asset motive.

 

There was a part of him, under the cold, under the metal, that hated it; it was the part that sometimes looked at light and shadow and facial expressions he could decipher for practical purposes but could not imitate, and felt the need to immortalize them on paper with a pencil, softening lines with the side of his thumb.

 

There was a part of him, somewhere, maybe not the same part, or maybe yes, that felt better for having the reasons. Relieved.

 

The Asset wore a uniform of black, linear panels of the same color running up to his chest, and the colors might have been wrong. The shield he carried was blue and silver, the circle in the center navy, and there perhaps should have been a star there, somewhere, like there should have been a star in the plain white circle in the center of the uniform, that broke the white lines that ran about his shoulders.

 

There was a woman, there was a man, there was another woman, there was a neighborhood, there was a cause, there was a notebook filed with lines softened with the side of a thumb, there was a part of the Asset that knew what the private joke was about. There was a part under the cold-or parts, or a consciousness, or perhaps a whole world. There was a part of him that hated; what, he couldn’t say, but it was not the driven hate of his superiors.

 

The moment was lost in a sea of its peers, not recollected after it occurred, but when the Winter Soldier completed a mission in Brazil, when he sent a message to a politician through the deaths of his children, something happened. Somethings.

 

First, the Asset encountered the children’s father. He looked like he was staring into hell.

 

Second, the Asset looked back to the skull and tentacles painted on the wall, in blood, and remembered that it hadn’t always been this way, remembered that he had painted other things, once, nicer things.

 

Third, the Asset considered taking his gun and turning on himself, because it hadn’t always been this way. Which way it had been, which way it was now, which way he wanted it to be, he didn’t know, but it had been; just been.

 

Wasn’t it time for his comeuppance? Wasn’t it? Shouldn’t it be?

 

The Asset may or may not have felt extremely tired once back from Brazil, may or may not have killed or at least severely injured several technicians, because _it hadn’t always been this way_ , and the machine may or may not have run more times than usual, and there may or may not have been another machine, once, another soldier. Or no, not a soldier; a good man. Had it been the Asset?

 

In any case, nevertheless, regardless, for better or worse, the Asset did not miss when he took a shot.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

A group of mountain climbers, on vacation in the Alps, came across a ravine, came across a river, came across a frozen figure; frozen in ice, frozen in time.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“You’ve been asleep, Sarge. For over seventy years.”

 

 Oh.

 

Oh. 

 

Oh, fuck.

 

“You going to be okay?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, I just…advertising’s really become an art form, hasn’t it?”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Some getting used to. That was what they said it would take. That… That was an understatement.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The Avengers Initiative was a democracy, and thank goodness, because James couldn’t lead them if he tried.

 

The uniform was tight. Apparently the 21st Century had a thing for highlighting asses. He shouldn’t have worn it, but apparently a Captain was needed. There was another shield, now, because they had never found Steve’s, or Steve. There was a place called Wakanda, and there, could be found Vibranium.

 

He got along with Stark about as well as he had gotten along with Howard, so somewhere between a house on fire, and mongoose and a cobra.

 

The man Coulson was looking for was Steve, not him, but it was nice, anyway.

 

Natasha made him uncomfortable, and whether that was because she was so _Natasha,_ or the future was so _future_ , or because she was deliberately trying, James didn’t know. Either way, she made him trip over his tongue worse than Steve ever had with anyone.

 

Steve. Hmm. -No. James had nothing to say about Steve; to himself, or to the interviewers, of which there were many, who cared not at all.

 

The team called him James, not Bucky; Sarge, not Cap, and Tony made his Tower’s walls soundproof, so he was free to wake up screaming as loud as he liked.

 

After the imminent threat of crazy Norse aliens had come and gone, James was back to what he had been doing before: not quite giving up.

 

He took a job with SHEILD, glad for the excuse to be out of the Captain America uniform, and back to his own; more discrete.

 

James was never a leader, never the lionhearted visionary optimist Steve had been, but he kept getting the nagging feeling that this wasn’t what Steve had died for.

 

Natasha still made him uncomfortable, but was arguably more messed up than he was, if she had hiding it down to an artful science. Either way, he still wasn’t quite sure how to classify the thing, except to say it _was_ a thing that they were having.

 

Either way, she made him privy to the locations of at least two of her apartments, and the ugliness of the world was easier for him to ignore.

 

But then- Then… Well.

 

James had never died for nothing, because he had died for Steve, but Steve had died for everyone, because of course he had, and now Steve had died for nothing, and that was just _unacceptable._

 

But then Steve hadn’t died, and the shield-wielding soldier in the all-black uniform with familiar lines was more than HYDRA’s cruel attempt at irony. It was just HYDRA, being cruel; Zola, being himself.

 

Steve was alive, but he wasn’t, but he was, but he was there, but he wasn’t, and either way, he didn’t know James.

 

He didn’t know him.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“You met him earlier this week. On another assignment.” The lie tasted heavy and wrong. The reasons did not suffice, and the cold did not propel him forward regardless, and _he didn’t want to do this anymore_.

 

“But I knew him.” The Asset knew it meant pain, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t.

 

Rumlow could have been uncomfortable, and that may have been a generality, or it may have had to do with the secret joke. The Asset looked at him, before he turned to go, and the look was a dare.

 

He didn’t remember the machine hurting that much.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

He didn’t want to do this anymore. He didn’t. He couldn’t. And he wouldn’t.

 

The Captain-the Sergeant, the Sergeant, _he_ was the Captain, he was _Steve_ -was brought onto the bank of the Potomac.

 

He was left on the bank of the Potomac. The Asset… He needed to run. He couldn’t…anything.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The Asset sat alone on the edge of the lone bed in the center of a motel room. The only light came from the moonlight slanting through the separation in the window’s curtains.

 

His uniform was folded neatly by the pillows, the only clothing he wore soft grey cotton pants. His guns and knives were arrayed linearly along the side of the bed, the most useful within easiest reach.

 

The Asset watched the moonlight moving over his hand. His weapon. Not his. Theirs. Theirs? He flexed his fingers, curled and uncurled his fist, stretching and bending at the elbow. The plates shifted and whirred and clicked as he moved, as fluid an approximation to the human body as anything could be. He held the arm up in front of him, palm held vertically, as if giving an order to halt. The Asset cocked his head to one side and watched; the light, the arm, the metal, the past that flickered at the edges and out of reach, the pain that was there but that wasn’t, the pain that was physical but not.

 

“Steve…” The Asset said quietly to no one but not really himself. Barnes had said his name was Steve. The Asset didn’t have a name. He had a call sign. “Steve. Steven Grant Rogers. Captain America. Steve.” The asset said the words in English, the perfect American accent, not a tinge of Russian in sight. He had known English, but had never spoken it, never made a habit of it, till he had, till he knew, till he had asked Pierce in perfect English who the man on the bridge was. “…Steve.” He whispered.

 

The Asset didn’t have a name. He had a call sign. He was the Winter Soldier. But he was a ghost. Ghosts didn’t get named. And ‘Steve’ didn’t sound right. ‘The Asset’ was. Or it was less wrong. But ‘Steve’ might have been right, once, a long time ago, older even than the cold.

 

Steven Grant Rogers watched the moonlight as it glinted off The Asset’s arm.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

 _The cold is everywhere, the cold is in, the cold is. In the smoke of his breath as he ran, frosting over the arm, turning it blue and black before it was artificial. In the recesses of his mind, throbbing through his headaches-_ when had he had headaches? Maybe all the time _-in his toes, burning his throat, in his mind-_ mind, different than the head, worse _-in his fingers as he takes his shots; in his heart, as he takes his shots, in his stomach, physical and fear, as they push him back into the chair. He hates the cold. He hates the cold. He can’t escape the cold, he can’t find his way out of the cold, they won’t let him leave the cold, they won’t take it away, they won’t listen to him, oh God, please, please, no, oh God take the cold, oh God, oh God please-_

_“I suggest you stay perfectly still…” Zola says, though he must know he cannot move anyway, as he takes his jaw in one cold, gloved hand, and takes the syringe in his other, its silver handle glinting in the harsh glare of the lab’s lights, looking more like a handgun than anything, as it descended down to his face, to his eye._

_“Oh God…”_

_“God cannot help you now, Captain Rogers.”_

The Asset bolted up, eyes snapping open, not really awake till he realized he was sitting straight up in bed, aiming a handgun at the wall with a practiced hand.

 

He was cold.

 

It was that cold, that memory, that dream, that nightmare, that bought him time, saved his life.

 

They come through the wall. Not the door, not the window; the wall, sheetrock and brick flying into the room, knocking into his already half-broken body.


	2. Chapter 2

"Wait here, alright?” Natasha said. “You’re already too deep into this.”

 

They were in a mall, the grand opening, on the third floor. Natasha moved around the escalators, staying just in view. James followed her bobbing red hair through the crowd. She stopped discretely next to a tall woman with the face of a huntress, tight dark-brown curls falling in a long rippling sheet that tapered to a rounded point at her hips. She was the Slovenian contact Natasha didn’t want James interacting with, the one with information about the Winter Soldier.

 

They proceed to examine merchandise to veil their discussion, and James looked through the crowd.

 

There was no one of note, not really, till he caught sight of a tall man with broad, hunched shoulders shifting through the crowd, conspicuous for his attempt to be inconspicuous. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of an oversized grey sweatshirt, cowl pulled low over his face.

 

The man turned his head in James’ direction, and he looked a lot like Steve. His eyes roved over the crowd, scared and looking for something, someone. A line of blood dripped down the side of his face, melding with another welling out of the corner of his mouth. Only when his visual search ended did the blood become important, and was roughly scrubbed away with the side of his hand, leaving a dull orange-ish smear.

 

He moved with a slight limp, breathed as if the very air was trying to kill him. The look in his eyes was unhinged and of fear and desperation and confusion.

 

James watched as his searching produced a result, and Steve ducked behind a configuration of mannequins and clothes. James saw the object of his discomfort; two men with comms in their ears and gun bulges hidden under their clothes, eyes roving over the crowd. They found nothing, disappearing as they slid down with the escalator.

 

Steve peered warily around a mannequin, then mixed with the crowd not quite seamlessly, moving away at an efficient pace.

 

James ran after him.


	3. Chapter 3

In hindsight, touching the man was a stupid idea, but when had James ever done anything smart?

 

He grunted a harsh breath as Steve pushed him into a wall in an empty hallway, the only doors leading to the bathrooms and a maintenance closet. His feet dangled maybe a foot above the floor, a metal hand around his throat, hard under its cloth glove, squeezing just enough to stop his breathing.

 

Steve was right handed-or he had been, because he wasn’t now. The man who dropped him suddenly once he realized who he was, backpedaling till he collided roughly with the wall, was not right handed, and might not be Steve, but he _was_ , he had to be, the Winter Soldier was methodical and emotionless, and maybe Crazy Steve wasn’t great, but at least it was Steve.

 

“I’m sorry…” Steve whispered hoarsely, pressed into the wall across from where James was hunched over, trying to breathe again. From up close, James could make out the dark bruise mottled over the side of his neck and jaw, the cuts strewn haphazardly over his face, the dark circles lining the underside of bloodshot eyes.

 

He was Steve. He always would be. He had stayed by James after Zola, when he was half-crazy and half-drunk with shell shock—excuse him, PTSD—and he would be damned if he didn’t do the same for him now.

 

“It’s okay, Steve.” James said, straightening.

 

“It’s not.” He replied with a stilted shake of his head.

 

“Okay.” James said. “Fine. I forgive you then.”

 

Steve gave him an earnestly confused look, laced with pain. “…Why?”

 

It acted like a verbal punch in the gut, one James worked past. “Because…you’re my friend. I’m your friend.”

 

“I tried to kill you.”

 

“Well, if you want to be technical, I tried to kill you.”

 

Steve struggled for a moment. “…It’s not the same.”

 

“No? Well, fine then. Because you would do it for me.”

 

“…I don’t know who you are.” Steve replied despairingly.

 

“You don’t need to know me.” James said, shaking his head.

 

“No. No, I- I… _know_ you, I just… I don’t know who you _are_. I don’t remember you. I don’t _remember_.”

 

“Remembering isn’t everything, Steve.” James whispered.

 

“Yes it is.” Steve replied quickly, looking away, with the same old stubbornness that threatened to suffocate James. And, he supposed, for someone who didn’t, remembering might be everything.

 

“Okay.” James said, placating, because he didn’t know how else to do this. “Okay. …What…what do you remember, then?”

 

“…Everything bad.” Steve said, still looking away; maybe at the floor, maybe at the hand that wasn’t his, and maybe, maybe for him, remembering was everything.

 

“Oh. Well, that’s-that’s…that’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

 

Steve said, voice thick; “It’s not okay. It is my fault. It is. And it’s not okay. It’s all…I see.”

 

James searched for the right words, any words at all. “I could help you, you know.” He ended up blurting out, though he had meant to build up to it. “To remember. Good things. Good things can be…good, to remember. And I could help you, if…you wanted me to, if…you let me, if…I could.”

 

Steve looked up at James finally, plainly confused. “..You want to…help me.”

 

“Yes.” James answered, though it hadn’t really been a question.

 

“…Why?”

 

“Because, it…it really wasn’t your fault, Steve.” He replied, choosing his answer by the criteria of Steve’s inflection.

 

“You don’t know that.” Steve said, voice as stilted as his nod, something manic entering his bearing, the way he tried to melt through the wall. “You don’t know. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

 

“I don’t care.”

 

“ _Why not_?”

 

“ _Because_ \- …Dammit, because… You were the only person I had, Steve, for the longest time. You were like my brother. And I’m not going to just leave you. Not now, not like this. You don’t remember, Steve, but I do. And I _know_ that if you had had the choice, you wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

 

A faraway look came into Steve’s eyes. “The museum. I read that-it said…it said what I had done. With the plane. I was in a plane, but I don’t… Did I…?”

 

“Yeah. Yes. It-it’s true. They got…most everything right.” All Steve knew about himself came from a wing at the Smithsonian, but James chose to think about it later. “And that’s what I meant. About you. You’re like that. You…help people. Someone should help you.”

 

Steve looked like he might accept, for a moment, a long enough moment for James to start to cling to it, to read into the way Steve was biting his lip, but then the moment was gone. “I can’t. I can’t…be with you.”

 

“What do you mean?” James asked.

 

“I…” An uncomfortable sigh flared his nostrils, a hand disappearing under the sweatshirt’s hood to run through his hair. It came away bloodstained. “They’re looking for me. They- If I don’t hurt you, they will. I don’t want them to…”

 

“Hey. Steve. It’s okay.” James made the decision to cross the hall, peel Steve off the wall, keep him from skittering away by holding him by the shoulders non-aggressively. “Hey. Steve. Look at me. Come on. Steve.” It went on like that, till blue eyes hesitantly rose to meet brown. James held his gaze silently for a moment. “Till the end of the line, Steve.” It crossed James’ mind that that phrase meant more to him than it did to Steve. “I meant that. And I still do. Okay?”

 

Steve gave him a long look. “…Okay.”

 

Relief washed over James. “Okay. Now; I’m going to help you get out of here, okay?”

 

Fear clouded Steve’s features. He turned his head to the end of the hall, through which could be seen crowds large enough to be worthy of a grand opening passing in and out of view. Steve looked back to him. “They’re looking for me.” He said, voice jouncing with fear.

 

“I know.” James said, as comfortingly as he could.

 

“No, they…shot to capture, not kill. Th-they want me back. I-I don’t want to go…back I can’t go back I… I don’t…”  Steve kept the end of his thought behind a locked jaw, giving the floor a hard glare. His expression broke along with his voice, “I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.”

 

James bit down on the edges of his tongue to retain his clarity. “They won’t take you back, Steve. They won’t. You don’t have to hurt anyone, anymore. No one’s going to hurt you. I promise.”

 

Steve’s gaze rose to meet James’, and he got the sinking feeling that, however much Steve might not believe it, he would be held to that promise.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

“What the hell?” Natasha said, coming to a stop in front of him, peeved worry in her eyes. “What happened to you? I-did you see the agents before I did? Because, that might be the only explanation I’m accepting at this point.”

 

James opened and closed his mouth as Natasha’s gaze slid from his face to something behind him. It was Steve, he knew, who had lingered some yards behind by unspoken, unanimous decision. 

 

Her eyes slid back to James. “…I’ll go call Sam…tell him to bring the car.” She said, eyes staring straight into his. It took a minute for her to actually leave. 

 

James made his way back to Steve, who stood next to a tiered table laden with rib knit sweaters. For the sake of being inconspicuous, the sweatshirt had been changed to a slate blue variety, just as James was now wearing a dark jean jacket. 

 

“She’s mad I shot her, isn’t she?” Steve said quietly.

 

“What?” James replied, looking up at Steve. He was staring sullenly at the space Natasha had occupied. 

 

“She looked mad.”

 

She was. Not to say she cared about being shot; she had endured much worse. Her problem was James, and Steve, and the thread pulling. But Steve didn’t need to know that. “She’s not. She’s just…serious.”

 

“Oh. …Okay.”

 

It looked like Steve might say more, but instead, James found himself being tackled to the floor.

 

 

 

****** 

 

 

 

“Steve, Steve wait--” James stopped as he saw the bullet holes in the sweater display, rethinking his theory of a slip back into programming.

 

“Come  _on_.” Steve hissed, pulling James to his feet. 

 

He dragged him along for a few yards, and James hadn’t quite gotten his feet under him when Steve shoved him into the floor. 

 

He heard before he saw. Blows, grunts, zapping, a groaning yell that could belong to no one but Steve. 

 

James pushed his face off the floor, and saw four men closing with Steve. He was scrambling to his feet to help him, when he was yanked back by a blur of an arm wrapping around his neck. 

 

Another flashed into view, a cattle-prod-style Taser crackling down to his torso. James grabbed the man’s wrist before the Taser could connect, his other pulling at the forearm pushing a dent into his windpipe. They struggled for a long moment, before James drove his heel hard into one of the man’s shins, where foot met leg. He didn’t fall, but the arm holding the Taser unlocked, and James was able to shove it back in a way it wasn’t supposed to, to the tune of popping joints. 

 

James spun away in a fluid movement, grabbing the man’s shirt to hold him steady and continuing to drive the Taser into his face. He fell to the floor with a thump.

 

Turning away from the body to find Steve, James saw another agent bearing down on him, a knife slashing down at his chest. James jumped back, entering into intense hand-to-hand with the agent, who tried desperately to get his knife to catch flesh.  

 

The man eventually drove his arm down in an arc, knife speeding towards James’ throat. He caught his wrist, pivoting to the side of him and driving the side of a palm up into his elbow, his arm snapping into an unnatural arc. James continued his pivot behind the man, kicking him hard in the back of one knee. He toppled to the floor, and James drove the butt of his knife into his temple. 

 

James turned to look for Steve. He wasn’t hard to spot. 

 

Four bodies, broken and bleeding, were strewn around his feet. He was being held in place by two large men standing behind him, arms wrapped around his shoulders and arms and neck, trying to hold on as the Winter Soldier struggled to break free. 

 

A third agent stood in front of him, trying to get himself in a position to thrust a needle-tipped silver apparatus into Steve. He swung the metal briefcase he carried hard into Steve’s jaw, a loud crack signaling impact. James winced in commiseration as flecks of blood flew through the air. 

 

James started forward as Steve got his feet under him. He heard the grating whirr that came from the arm, saw as Steve’s hand flashed up to grab hold of one of the agents’; he screamed as it broke with a snap. His scream was cut short as Steve grabbed him by the neck and flipped him over his body with a strong tug. The syringe was knocked out of the briefcase-wielding agent’s hand with a roundhouse kick. 

 

Movement flashed at the corner of James’ vision. He turned, but he turned too late. A Taser was thrust squarely into the center of his chest. 

 

He didn’t go down as easily as that agent had. He had a serum. He could take a beating. But it did make him a little weaker, hesitate, did give the agent and his quick, savage blows an advantage as they closed. 

 

James held him off as long as he could, but then he couldn’t, and HYDRA only wanted Steve alive, so he found himself staring into the barrel of a gun.

 

And then he wasn’t, and there was Steve, ramming into the agent, momentum carrying them into the low glass wall that wrapped around the hole cut into the middle of the mall, so the shoppers walking in on the first floor could marvel at the domed glass ceiling. Momentum threw them over the wall.

 

 

 

****** 

 

 

 

The screaming of the crowd on the third floor was in response to the carnage; the yelling of the crowd on the first floor because of the two people that had fallen over the railing.

 

The Winter Soldier would have shot the agent, James thought as he rushed to the escalator on the second floor; or stabbed him, or broken his neck, or some other controlled form of murder.

 

Knocking into him so forcefully they careened into a void of empty space, and all to save James; that was Steve. He had done it before, in Austria and Poland, because he was an idiot, and too attached to James for his own good. 

 

If he lived—oh God—then it wasn’t as detrimental as it used to be. It was good. It meant he was still there, somewhere. 

 

About halfway down, James vaulted over the side of the escalator. He landed in a jarring roll, rose, and kept on running. 

 

The crowd James had seen gathering around Steve and the agent had pushed back in escape, likely having seen blood that should not have been there. James shouldered a path through the press of bodies traveling in the opposite direction, finally breaking into empty space. 

 

Steve was slowly, gingerly crawling to his knees; the agent was slowly bleeding out, eyes open, breathing ragged, a dagger protruding from his neck. 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

The rasping gasps of the agent continued, growing ever fainter. It was unnecessary to attack any further; he would die. 

 

(That seemed so suddenly cold,  _unfeeling_. There seemed suddenly something wrong with it.)

 

The Asset struggled to his feet, avoiding putting his weight on his right foot for a shooting pain in his ankle. He didn’t remember pain ever being so pronounced. Or, at least, he didn’t remember pain ever getting in his way this much. 

 

“Steve, you okay?” A worried, slightly breathless, slightly  _familiar_  voice said. The Asset felt fingers brush his shoulder. He flinched away. 

 

The man backed away, keeping his hands where the Asset could easily see them. “Okay. Sorry. Sorry.”

 

The Asset didn’t get apologies. That would mean he felt discomfort, and that would mean he felt. He didn’t. He wasn’t supposed to. (But he did. He could.) 

 

And his body wasn’t doing what he wanted it to, and it was frustrating, and everything _hurt_ , and that was frustrating. And his mind wasn’t doing what he wanted it to either, he couldn’t remember, and there was something he should have known, here; something about this man. He had known this man. He had known the man that wasn’t trying to hurt him. 

 

“…You remember me, right?” The man says easily, though obviously apprehensive. “I’m Bucky.”

 

Bucky. Bucky. The Captain. This was the man he shouldn’t kill. But then, this was also the Secondary Target, and the Asset was supposed to kill him a very long time ago. 

 

That had been disobedience. It still was. The feeling, the thinking, the deciding, the escaping; it all was. Oh, he would catch hell for this. But no; the Asset had already decided not to do what his superiors said, hadn’t he? Yes, he had. But it still felt  _wrong_. 

 

The Asset looked away from the man, Bucky, raising his flesh and blood hand to stop the blood that seeped out of his mouth from the wound the agent with the briefcase had left. He was confused. The Winter Soldier wasn’t supposed to be confused. He didn’t like to be. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. There was no course of action, not even possibilities to choose from, because all the Asset could think to do was kill or run; and that seemed wrong.

 

“And you’re Steve. …Right?” 

 

“Steve,” the Asset mouthed into his sleeve. Steve. His eyes darted to and from Bucky. 

 

Steve. Right. 

 

The Asset swallowed hard, tasting copper. His breathing shook with something he didn't want, didn't like; with fear. 

  


  


"I'm sorry." He blurted, before he could stop himself, before he could really know what he was saying, and he _hated_ himself for it; so weak, so vulnerable. But he couldn't help it; he _was_ sorry, so, so sorry, for things this man didn't even know about, things the Asset didn't even know.

  


But, "It's okay," the man said anyway—Bucky said.

  


The Asset didn't know what to say next—in all likelihood would have said nothing—but their exchange was ended by the redhead; the other Secondary Target, he was supposed to kill her too. 

  


"Go!" She said, not stopping her sprint, but slowing down. "Go! We have to go now!"

  


"You okay?" Bucky asked.

  


The Asset nodded, and they took off after the woman.

  


They ran through the mall, the parking garage their goal, where they would meet a man named Wilson. The Asset thought he was the man with the wings, the man whose wings he had broken. _'How many wings have you broken over the years_ ,’ asked a whisper in the back of his mind, ‘ _how many?’_

 

Turning down a bend in the wide, white hall, they all halted. There were agents, waiting for them, already in position, already aiming. These, these agents were not undercover; they stood assembled around the hallway in all-black fatigues, armed to the teeth, obviously there for all to see and fear. The Asset did.

 

He did, but it was secondary, almost. But not to the cold. The first, most important thing the Asset knew, was that Bucky was in the line of fire; Bucky was going to get hurt. And the redhead, too. He couldn't allow, that. 

 

The Asset assessed his surroundings.

 

On the right side of the hallway was a store selling clothes for adolescents and something called Sephora; cosmetics, perhaps. On the left, a large technological store, a white apple painted on the glass door. In the center, a kiosk piled with cellphone covers. Nothing to use. And his weapons were all buried in rubble in a motel room ten miles away. His uniform as well; the only armor he had was a sweatshirt. 

 

The only weapons he had were his own two hands. It wouldn't be a problem, except he had yards of no man's land to cover.  

 

The Asset looked to the agents; fourteen. They hadn't made their move yet; he realized it was because they were waiting for him. Afraid of him. Logical, perhaps, but still strange that _they_ should fear _him_. Strange that he knew what he could do, knew he would succeed, but yet what he could do wouldn't be done by him. 

 

The Asset exhaled deeply through his nose. 

 

Bucky was shoved through the open doors of the clothing store with the metal arm, the redhead trapped under him; they crashed into a configuration of mannequins. 

 

The Asset sprinted to the agents with as much speed as he could muster in such a short distance. He came to an abrupt, skid-less stop, shouldering into one of the agents, sending him sliding over the floor; in the same movement, the metal arm swung up to break the neck of another man. 

 

He closed with the agent that stepped over the body, breaking the wrist holding a knife with the side of a stiff palm, swinging the move back up into his throat; grabbing the man's hand, the Asset stabbed him between the shoulder blades with his own knife. Arms were not meant to bend that way; it broke with a series of cracks. 

 

Another agent filled the empty space— _cut off one head, two more will take its place_ —elongated Taser in hand. He swung down to connect the electricity with the Asset's body, altering and renewing the thrust as he parried. A flash of movement at the corner of the Asset's eye, and his human arm swung back to knock a gun out of the hand of the agent behind him, the metal one still engaged with the agent in front.

 

The Taser was warded off as his right elbow went back into the sternum of the other agent; as he grunted in pain, the Asset kicked him hard in the shin, continuing the move by smashing the side of the metal fist into the Taser-wielding agent, sending him and his brains sprawling. As the agent behind him fell to his knees, the Asset pulled the gun from his thigh holster. 

 

One, two, four shots fired; four agents felled. 

 

The Asset pivoted as he heard someone yell behind him. An agent was running towards him, planning to brain him with the butt of his rifle. He knocked it aside with a vertical swing of his forearm, stole a knife from the agent's belt, and drove it into the hollow under his chin. 

 

He winced behind closed lips as a bullet ripped through cloth and flesh. It, however, did very little to stop him. The solar plexus of the agent who had taken the shot connected with the Asset's boot; he flew through the air and shattered through the glass doors of the technological store. 

 

At the sound of footsteps behind him, the Asset turned, lashing out on instinct, knife automatically sinking into the chest of an agent. Another was positioned to the right and behind him. He met the same end. The Asset pivoted and twirled the knife into a backhand position. This agent stumbled nimbly back from his first two swipes, but the third slashed him about the middle. He fell disemboweled to the floor.

 

Two gunshots echoed throughout the cavernous white hallway. The Asset felt the bullets sink deep into his abdomen. He dropped onto the linoleum as more shots meant for him shattered the cellphone covers with plastic cracks. Glancing up, the Asset saw the man he had first shouldered into lying on the floor, aiming at his face. He saw the knife lying on the floor out of the corner of his eye, and rolled to it as the agent emptied his magazine. 

 

The Asset's fingers closed around the knife, he came up from his roll in a half-sitting position, and fluidly threw the blade. 

 

His missile landed solidly in the hollow under the agent's neck; his mouth gaped for a moment, eyes on the Asset without really seeing him, and then he dropped stiltedly back and was still. 

 

The Asset got to his feet, body throbbing. He assessed what he had done. Then, he _saw_ what he had done, saw the bodies and blood and broken glass and brains and bullet holes and shells.

 

Then, the Asset turned around and saw Bucky. 

 

He and the redhead had extricated themselves from the mess of mannequins and clothes, and were standing at the entrance of the clothing store. Bucky was looking at him with a not quite shocked, not quite blank expression. Like he couldn't believe what had just transpired, what he had just seen, what he had just seen Steve do. Looking at him like the Steve he had known wasn't capable of what the Asset had just done—not in terms of skill; in the morality of the thing. The Asset realized, that he had shot to kill, not incapacitate. There wasn’t anything _wrong_ with that, nothing _abnormal_ , but there _was_.

 

The Asset felt suddenly a deep sense of guilt. Self-consciousness. Confusion. He wondered if there would be comeuppance for this. If Bucky would punish him for his show of brutality—because that was exactly what it was: Brutality. Not efficiency, not skill. Or worse, the Asset wondered if Bucky would rescind his offer of help—worse, but not because the Asset would be helpless without it; doomed to die. He would, but that wasn't his concern. It was because... He didn't... The Asset just had this SENSE, that, he should stay with this man, this man he wasn't supposed to run from, this man who hadn't hurt him yet. 

 

But, but, Bucky did none of those things. 

 

He just blinked, swallowed whatever he was feeling, and moved towards the Asset. The redhead followed, giving him a wider berth, watching what remained of the debacle with careful assessment. Her look was schooled to nothingness, but the glances she shot at Bucky were hard to miss; her look was one of worry, for him. The Asset did not find her in the wrong. 

 

"You okay?" Bucky asked, stopping about two yards from him, and the Asset felt both grateful and guilty for the space he could have given the length of in millimeters, if asked.

 

The Asset nodded.

 

Bucky cleared his throat. "I mean... Are you...? Gonna be fine?" He said, gesturing at his wounds, at the liquid warmth the Asset was starting to feel seeping over his stomach.

 

"...I'm operational." The Asset blurted, immediately feeling his shoulders begin to slide up to his ears as he cowered, because he thought that was the wrong thing to say. 

 

"Okay. Good. That-that's good." Bucky replied.

 

There was a pause, in which the Asset looked about him again, at what he'd done. "I'm sorry." He said, because he didn't know what else to say, what else Bucky wanted to hear. But he knew he wasn't Steve, and he should have been, and that Bucky wanted him to be. And his apology was more than trying to appease, make up for disobedience—the Asset felt something deeply wrong, with who he was.

 

"You don't have to be sorry, Steve." Bucky sighed, and The Asset thought the thing that sadly pursed his lips might have been him being genuine.

 

And no. No, _Steve_ didn't have to be sorry. _He_ did.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

They resumed their dash for the parking garage. The Asset followed. The gunshot wounds did not impede his movements. The first was through-and-through, entering about the front of his right hip and exiting at the back. The other two were more difficult, buried deep in his abdomen. Blood was already starting to seep through the thick sweatshirt, crimson blooming over blue. Conspicuous, but not overly worrying. 

 

There were... _things_ , lurking, crawling about the edges of his mind just out of reach, like creatures ghosting about shadowed forests. Forests. He remembered a forest, something going down; bodies. He didn’t remember much else, but knew everything else. 

 

The Asset remembered the man gasping, gasping for life and begging for air, as his life ended on the floor of a mall.

 

The Asset felt dirty. Used. Coated on blood, suffocated by blood, buried in ash, and he wanted out. 

 

The Asset blinked hard, clearing his mind. What-ifs, had-beens, what-would-bes, moral dilemmas; they were not for him, not what he was made for, not what he was good at. That was what they had always told him—they would pat him on the head, tell him to be a good boy and take his shots. They would worry about the rest, they would give him his missions, prep him and wipe him and expect his trust, his loyalty, his obedience, and he had given it to them. 

 

The Asset had given so much, he didn't even have a name. He had a call sign.

 

The Asset realized the black around the edges of his vision, the fuzz, wasn't psychosomatic. Realized his limp was embarrassingly pronounced. Realized he was panting, not with the effort of exertion, but pain, and something else. And oh, there was pain. 

 

The Asset realized his blood was more than conspicuous, coating the front of the sweatshirt, sticky and wet. The Asset realized the injuries he had earned at the motel could only have been exacerbated by his recent exertion. The Asset realized he was bleeding out. The Asset realized he might die. The Asset realized, after the initial rush of fear—that he didn't care.

 

(Wasn’t it time for his comeuppance? Wasn’t it? Shouldn’t it be?)

 

The Asset realized he was sick of fear, realized he wasn't as brave as he should be, as he was supposed to be, as brave as the Winter Soldier.

 

Or no. Brave might have been the wrong word. Maybe the Winter Soldier was wrong, and the Asset was right. Steve was right. 

 

Maybe the Asset felt regret that he would never get the chance to be Steve. Or, at least, see if he could try. He might have liked to try. 

 

Maybe he could have, someday, a day very far away, been the man Bucky was looking for; Bucky, the man he shouldn't kill, the man who hadn't hurt him yet, the man who said he wouldn't, the man the Asset didn't understand, the man the Asset had somehow needed to protect.

 

Or maybe he was just loosing too much blood.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam was loitering near the entrance to the parking garage, leaning against the wall, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. He jumped into action as he saw James enter the garage, Steve on his heels.

 

“You okay?” He said, falling into step beside James.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” James replied. “You?”

 

“Well, I could do with a little less humidity. And Natasha?”

 

The faint echoes of her shootout wafted into the garage. “…She’s on her way.”

 

“Great.” Sam said, as they made their way to the car. James saw him shoot a glance back to Steve, but his lack of real reaction to his presence was more graceful than Natasha's. That was good, at least. James turned back to Steve as well.

 

He wasn’t sure if he was doing too well. Steve wasn’t letting on, keeping a perfect poker face, but the blood and the limp spoke for themselves. James wondered if he would die. It certainly seemed a possibility, macabre though it was; to come all this way and fail…

 

Sam ran ahead and dove into the driver’s seat, jamming the key into the ignition. The engine grated on, headlights throwing splashes of yellow light on the concrete wall. James lingered by the car, watching as Steve slid quietly into the backseat, his jaw tightening against a show of pain. James went around the car and pulled the other backseat door open, stopping and looking up as he heard footsteps echoing in quick succession behind him.

 

Natasha ran up to the car, skirting around it. James was resuming his descent into the car, but found himself being pulled back by a hand on the back of his jacket. Natasha slid into the backseat next to Steve, giving James a push towards the passenger seat door. They were too pressed for time for James to protest.

 

The tires screeched as Sam tore out of the parking space.

 

“Slower!” Natasha said. “Go slower! Well, now don’t go for a Sunday drive, either, just…be more discrete.”

 

They _were_ discrete, going about the same speed as everyone else exiting or entering the parking garage, until they reached the entrance. Just as they were about to slide into the light of the outside world, the sound of tires screeching behind them reached their ears. James twisted in his seat and saw a black SUV speeding out of the darkness of the parking garage towards the car. He turned to face forward again as the car pulled out of the garage, and saw another SUV barreling towards them from the right.

 

Being discrete was pretty much screwed, after that.

 

Sam swerved in time to keep the SUV from ramming straight into the right side of the car. As it was, the HYDRA car clipped the corner of the trunk, sending the car into a 180 degree spin, as the SUV continued speeding behind them with momentum, screeching to a stop a number of yards away.

 

Before it could turn around to charge again like a Spanish bull, the SUV in the parking garage jumped out of the dark maw of the garage’s entrance, bulldozing into the grille of the car. James grunted as his head collided with his seat’s headrest. After settling in from the initial, jarring impact, the SUV accelerated again, pushing the car out into the mall’s parking lot.

 

The second HYDRA car cut their progress short, ramming into the right side of the car as it first intended. James saw the SUV coming, and grabbed the handle of his door on instinct, bracing himself as best he and his serum could.

 

The backseat, though, took the brunt of the attack. Out of the corner of his eye, James saw Natasha fly across the leather seats and into Steve, whose head had collided with the window with enough force to crack the glass. He softened the impact, and she recovered quickly.

 

She drew a gun and emptied the magazine into the windshield of the SUV through the window she had previously been sitting by, already shattered by HYDRA’s attack, broken shards of glass littering the backseat.

 

Natasha hit her marks, and the driver and the agent in the passenger seat were still.

 

Sam used the time she bought them to get the wheel back under his control, shifting gears so wildly James could almost hear the transmission groaning, till he was finally in a position to speed away.

 

They tore through the parking lot, swerving dangerously between civilian vehicles, bouncing like popcorn every time the car landed after flying over a speed bump.

 

The tires screeched as they tore out of the parking lot and into traffic, sending James crashing into his door.

 

Sam wove through vehicles as he made his way to the left lane, as James glanced through the rear-view mirror. He saw the SUV Natasha hadn’t gotten a shot at careen out of the parking lot.

 

They tore through a red light, the SUV now close on their tail. James twisted in his seat to monitor its progress, as he heard the click of Natasha reloading her gun. He watched in slight confusion as the sun roof opened.

 

A man pushed his head and shoulders out of the car. He then turned back down to the interior, reaching down and pulling out a long metal contraption. A long line of ammunition was slung over his shoulder. The man took hold of the top of the metal apparatus and pulled down, and a piece of the contraption swung up to make a right angle of the thing, the horizontal portion taking on a distinguishable shape.

 

James realized what it was.

 

“Get down!” He yelled, sliding down under the dashboard as he spoke, as the deafeningly loud sound of gunfire ripped through the car, shattering glass a background noise.

 

James pressed himself into the alcove under the dashboard as his seat was punctured to tatters. He turned to Sam, who was likewise crouched, twisted under the steering wheel; one of his hands was holding down the brake, as he reached up and behind his head with the other, trying to put the car in park without looking. Steve and Natasha were in a similar situation; Steve had crushed himself into the corner between his door and Sam’s seat, metal arm shielding his head, and Natasha was pressed flat against the floor.

 

James had an idea. A potentially stupid idea, but an idea just the same. And they didn’t have many other options.

 

He pulled his shield out of where he had placed it before entering the mall, between the wall of the car and the passenger seat, sliding his arm into the straps. “Natasha!” He yelled, through the din of bullets.

 

“What?” She yelled back, peeved, shielding her head with her arms against the broken glass.

 

“I need a gun!”

 

“Why are you two always under the impression I have an armory on my person at all times?”

 

“Because you _do_!” Sam yelled, still fiddling with the gear shift.

 

Natasha uncovered her head, sparing a quick glance to the spray of bullets flying through the rear window. Her hand disappeared under the passenger seat, coming back with a handgun. She tossed it to James.

 

He caught it deftly with a backhand move.

 

What are you gonna do?” Sam asked, as James rose slightly into a crouch, shield held in front of him.

 

“Uh,” James replied, pressing a button on the passenger seat door and lowering the window, “I’m not sure. Stay down!”

 

He assessed his surroundings one last time. The rest happened rather quickly.

 

James vaulted up, bullets pinging off the shield. He twisted his upper body out the window, maneuvering so the shield fit through with him. In the same motion, he lifted one of his legs onto the passenger seat, the foot of the other wedged in the corner between the dashboard and the radio to hold him steady.

 

He lifted the handgun, arm lying partly on the roof of the car to steady his aim. He breathed in, he focused, and he fired.

 

The man’s neck snapped back as James’ bullet landed squarely in his forehead. He sagged back down into the car, arms stretched out to his sides, keeping him from falling all the way inside.

 

James twisted back into the car, dropping heavily into his seat. “Go!” He yelled, though Sam needed no prompting; they speed forward as quickly as the car could go; a dinky little thing he and Sam had purchased before Natasha joined their search.

 

“Before you say a single word, Wilson,” Natasha said, already having pulled herself back into her seat, “the gun wasn’t actually on my person.”

 

They wove in and out of traffic, decreasing their speed slowly as they put more and more distance between themselves and the mall.

 

James heard the leather of the back seats squeak as someone moved. Natasha’s head came into view, the fingers of the arm that wrapped around the back of the passenger seat brushing his shoulder. “Your assassin is bleeding out back there, you know.” She announced in a low murmur.

 

James watched the backseat through the rear-view mirror. Steve was slouched in his seat, the blood on his sweatshirt more copious than when he had last seen him. He was looking out the window, eyes snapping to each car as it passed, like he was waiting for HYDRA to jump out at them again any second now. He was lucid, certainly, but there was something in him, in his eyes, or the set of his shoulders or his jaw. Something that was ebbing.

 

James didn’t know what that something was, because though the person he was looking at was much less the Winter Soldier than he had been in D.C., and though he _was_ Steve, he wasn’t, not really, not the one James had known. He knew that, he had known that since the debacle in Washington, and Sam and then Natasha had gently reminded him of it periodically throughout their search, to make sure he wasn’t walking into this blindly. James was acutely aware of the fact that Zola had taken his best friend, his brother, and stripped him of everything that made him who he was; his personality, his morality, his free will. James knew he was closer to the Winter Soldier than Steve.

 

But, for some reason, it still hit him like a ton of bricks, the knowledge that he really didn’t know Steve at all anymore. Even his face was different; James couldn’t tell what he was thinking like he used to. And the things he could read were so radically different. Steve processed information differently; Zola had changed the very way he saw and understood the world.

 

James didn’t know what the something was, because he didn’t know Steve—not even his facial expressions.

 

“I know.” James replied quietly.

 

“Got any ideas about how you want to handle that?” Natasha asked.

 

James sighed. “…We can’t take him to a hospital, they’ll be on us in a second—and not just HYDRA.” He sighed again. “I don’t know. We all have some medical training, but I don’t know if it’s enough. And we still don’t have any way to know exactly what’s wrong with him.”

 

“I know a guy.” Natasha says. “If you’d be open to that.”

 

“A guy?” James echoed.

 

“Yeah. He’s good. Used to be a legit surgeon. I wouldn’t _trust_ him, per se, but he respects his payments. Provides valuable services. I’ve used him before. I think he might be your only shot.”

 

James weighed his options. He glanced back at the mirror; Steve had slipped further into his slouch, sleeve pressed to his bottom lip to staunch the blood seeping out of his mouth. He stared at the back of Sam’s seat with a not entirely blank expression, deep rumination in his features, though it didn’t exactly shift them. As James watched, Steve’s lips moved, mouthing a silent something into his sleeve. He looked to Sam, who shrugged without taking his eyes off the road. “…Fine.” He whispered to Natasha.

 

She nodded. “Hey, Sam, turn here, will you?”

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

 

You okay?” Sam asked without preamble, as they watched Natasha talk with her ‘guy’ in front of a warehouse with walls of corrugated metal, through the open space where the windshield used to be.

 

“Yeah.” James replied. “I’m fine.”

 

“Well, if you’re sure—”

 

“I am.”

 

“Okay.” Sam said.

 

Natasha passed the man a roll of bills. He nodded curtly, and trotted into the warehouse. Natasha beckoned to James and Sam as she followed the man inside.

 

James exited the car, walking around behind it with quick, hurried strides. Through the window of the backseat door, he saw Steve slumped against the door, eyes closed; he had clocked out a short while ago. James slowly opened the door, a hand on Steve’s shoulder replacing it as his support. With Sam’s help, James carried him to the warehouse.

 

“You know,” Sam said, as they neared the door, “he’s heavier than he looks.”

 

“Yeah, well, he had a big breakfast.” James returned.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The facility ended up being better equipped than James had expected, though he really didn’t have an image in mind. They had moved the bullet ridden, smashed-up car into the warehouse so as to avoid being found.

 

The doctor who hadn’t given himself a name was currently in a different section of the facility with Steve, doing what needed doing to save him, while James, Natasha, and Sam waited on a configuration of metal benches near where they had left the car.

 

James was realizing, between developing a few ulcers and straining his ears to the sound of metal tools clattering as they were placed down, that he didn’t really have a plan after this. He had been so focused on finding Steve—a multifaceted task in and of itself—and, honestly, he hadn’t thought he would ever even find him. There were practicalities he hadn’t planned for; where they would go after this, how they would evade HYDRA. The government—especially the Council—wanted someone to blame, someone tangible; it was why Natasha had taken such pains to get Loki to admit he had been controlling Clint, so he wouldn’t be a suspect after New York. Natasha and James wouldn’t do, and they had both denounced Sam’s involvement. But the Winter Soldier? The Winter Soldier was a fantastic scapegoat—forget the fact that there were countless other things he would have to answer for, if caught. And the chance of James convincing anyone of consequence that Steve had been forced to do those things was slim, even if he was America’s golden boy. And James had a sense that Steve—his basic personality, at least, if not his memories—was more ‘there’ than he seemed, even if it was subconscious. And if he was, James knew for a fact that Steve would let himself be punished for his deeds, whether he had wanted to do them or not, out of sheer guilt.

 

James realized, too, he didn’t even know most of what Steve had done for HYDRA. And he didn’t know what they had done to him. He didn’t know how deep it went. James didn’t know if he could get him back.

 

He knew that, he had known that since he started this, he had always known that there was a big chance the kid he’d grown up with was beyond his reach. But that knowledge was more tangible than it had been before.

 

Way back when, the Commandos had backed HYDRA into a corner, and in their desperation they had taken three families hostage. They had saved the families, and taken about three villages out of HYDRA control. But one of the hostages had died in the process; a grandfather, a little too old to be fast enough to make it out of the way in time. His death had eaten away at Steve for weeks.

 

But it wasn’t about incapacitation anymore—not even about efficiency; the agent that fallen from the third floor of the mall was certainly not a threat anymore, but he had been stabbed, nevertheless. Steve had gone for the kill. That was what Zola had made him into.

 

James spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about that difference, and ruminating on what he’d like to do to one Dr. Arnim Zola.

 

“If this guy was a successful surgeon, why would he start doing this?” Sam asked, peeling James out of his mind’s hamster wheel of questions without real answers.

 

“Walked into an OR on smack.” Natasha replied nonchalantly.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

A few hours later, Natasha’s ‘guy’ walked out of his makeshift operating room.

 

“Well, your friend over there should be fine.” He said, voice rolling with an Australian accent. “I opened him up, poked around a bit. Mostly just watched him heal on his own.” He told that bit of information nonchalantly; James assumed experience and the other two large rolls of money Natasha had slipped him were responsible for his lack of questions. “You’re proficient enough to take the stitches out yourself, I assume. And, uh…that’s it. I am now going to go purchase a pack of cigarettes. I will use one of the two cars I have on the premises, leaving behind a silver SUV I keep out back, with a set of keys under the front right wheel.” He continued pointedly. He then bowed graciously in Natasha’s direction. “Thank you, dear lady, for the drinking money. And with that, I bid you all adieu.”

 

As the door to the warehouse swung shut behind the man, James turned to Natasha. “You’re sure he won’t talk?”

 

“Only if he gets caught and his life is threatened. Like I said, he respects payment.” Natasha replied. “And in all likelihood, he won’t get caught. He hasn’t yet. He’s got something of a system; he’s probably on his way to an airport already.”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

As it turns out, Natasha really did spend the few months between what happened in Washington and joining James and Sam establishing new covers. The apartment she directed them to—as hotels were more dangerous—a few counties away from the mall, had been leased to one Monica Walsh.

 

It was of a good size while still being inconspicuous, most of the space taken from the small living room and kitchen and given to the three bedrooms; two situated side by side on the right side of the apartment, if one stood with their back to the front door looking in, and the final, slightly larger bedroom at the back of the apartment, directly across from the front door.

 

It was there that Steve was situated, placed on the king sized bed that was really one of the only things in the room, looking somehow wrong amid the stark white bedding; a mismatched jigsaw puzzle of metal and skin, that fused together seamlessly.

 

James left him to sleep off his injuries, choosing to situate himself on one of the two tall bar stools pushed against the counter of the small kitchenette.

 

Sam went to procure supplies, because the only things Natasha kept in her kitchen were vodka, cheddar Goldfish, and a stack of bar soap in one of the cupboards.

 

It took a few minutes for Natasha to sit down at the bar next to him, bringing the vodka with her. She poured them both glasses, because, according to her, it was part of his training.

 

“Training?” James inquired, taking a sip.

 

“Yup.” Natasha replied after downing the contents of her glass. “Training. Becoming proficient in red Russian angst.”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Steve slept for eight days, with the aid of sedatives the Aussie had given them. James spent most of that time sitting next to the bed staring at him.  

 

He didn’t have a plan for the logistics, and he didn’t have one for the man himself.

 

He was an idiot from 1940s Brooklyn, thrust into a world he didn’t understand—not for the computers, the fast-paced-ness; for the civilization itself, the ruthlessness, the _people_ , he didn’t understand the _people_ , because they were the same, but just _not_ —and somehow, he had gotten himself twisted into its underworld.

 

James wasn’t a doctor, a psychiatrist; and even if he was, he had no way of knowing exactly what Zola had done to Steve, how to reverse it. And with the speed things were moving at, he didn’t have the time to try to formulate a plan. Steve slept the sleep of the drugged for about eight days, with the aid of the sedatives the Aussie had given them, to help with pain management. But he was at least eighty percent healed by day four or five, and the rest  of it was pure selfishness on James' part.

 

Or maybe it wasn’t. James knew Steve would punish himself for those years spent a murderer, and he would do it severely, stubbornly, blindly, because he never did have much of a stomach for injustices. So maybe those extra few days spent sedated were a mercy.

 

He called Tony somewhere during those days, because he hadn’t many times since the Triskelion, and the man had a tendency to worry, despite vehement denial and the roundabout way he did it, to preserve pride. The only problem with his roundabout way, was that it usually consisted of hacking into everything but the toaster trying to find who he was looking for, and James would prefer to give him the vague version of what he was up to.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

When Steve did finally wake up, James knew Natasha was hovering, armed, somewhere on the other side of the bedroom door, Sam in all likelihood somewhere nearby, doing something similar.

 

As his eyes blinked open, the first thing in them was muddled confusion. The second thing, and the first lucid notion, was visceral disappointment. James recognized it; the first month after waking up, he had wondered, every morning, why in the hell he wasn’t dead, because being alive was so damn complicated.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Romanov fiddled with the radio as Wilson took them down the highway. Bucky was pretending to be absorbed in a map, but the Asset saw him watching him out of the corner of his eye. Bucky sat in the backseat next to the Asset, and he had seen how that had made Romanov uncomfortable in the beginning, though one couldn’t tell under her poise, not now. Not with the overall tense atmosphere; one could cut it with a garroting wire.

 

Bucky tried to project a calm, nonchalant demeanor, and the Asset knew it was for his sake, but he still sat pressed into the corner of his seat, trying to make himself as small as he could, wired and afraid. He couldn’t help but feel that he was in an enclosed space full of not-quite enemies; even Bucky, who was the most unopposed to the Asset’s presence, radiated discomforted apprehension under his calm.    

 

Each time a larger car passed by, the Asset tensed slightly. The Asset was surprised HYDRA hadn’t caught up with them by now. But he knew, he knew, he knew they would come. It was only a matter of time. Bucky asked the Asset, sometimes, if he was alright. No doubt the war being waged in his mind—the Winter Soldier’s instincts, Pierce’s orders, the Asset’s irrational, consuming fear of HYDRA and their imminent arrival, fear in and of itself, the worry that he shouldn’t be here with these people, the absence of memories, the presence of memories, the vague knowledge of Steve, the vague knowledge of the Soldier—was showing through his expression. The Asset would stare at him. The war prevented him from finding an answer, and if he had had one, he doubted if he would have had the words to say it with. Or the knowledge. Was the Asset okay? The Asset was operational, yes, he could fight and likely win at a moment’s notice—but he had a sense that wasn’t what Bucky meant. He meant the emotional, the mental; he meant the question in regards to comfort—the Asset’s, specifically. And the question, it being asked, anyone caring how the Asset felt, was strange, so strange, in and of itself, that it shocked any answer right out of the Asset’s mouth.

 

If, if the Asset had an answer; if, if he was brave enough to voice it—the Asset thought it might have been no.

 

It wasn’t that he didn’t remember. He did. Everything, at least everything of the Soldier’s. But it was all jumbled up, everything bad and horrible that had been done to him or—worse—that he had done. It was all there, all at once, a writhing sea that had been dropped on him; or perhaps that he had been dropped into. The Asset didn’t know any of it, it was all new, and there was too much, too much to make sense of, so he might as well not remember. The Asset’s head—no, mind, different than the head, worse—was an empty wasteland, and an unassumingly violent minefield, and a seething tsunami, all at once. The Asset didn’t know why he remembered now; he thought Pierce and…others had made a point of keeping him from doing that. The Asset thinks, perhaps, it was because they were rushing, desperate to complete their grand finale, install their world order, and they needed the Asset to help. They had wiped him, and sent him into the field. But, on the bridge, he had remembered Bucky. There was a…there was something specific that had been done, when the Asset remembered. Something more…comprehensive. And they had failed to do it, in favor of a vigorous wiping of a slate. Perhaps that was why, upon Bucky needling wounds on the Helicarrier, the Asset had malfunctioned. He didn’t know.

 

Thee Asset had a memory, of a short, bald man wearing glasses and a bow-tie, talking to Pierce. The Asset couldn’t have seen them, because he had been strapped to a chair, and they had been standing behind him. The man had been saying that shaping the mind was a delicate process. Multifaceted. Prone to shifts.

 

“Prone to malfunctions?” Pierce had asked, unhappy.

 

“Prone to shifts.” The small man had insisted. “What happened in Brazil was unfortunate. Steps are being taken to prevent it from happening again.”

 

Each time a semi or other large truck passed by, the Asset pushed himself further into his seat. It wasn’t that he thought they held HYDRA personnel; they were just big, and very loud, and frightening.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The Asset sat on a bench and stared at his shoes.

 

Bucky, Wilson, and Romanov are talking with an overly large blonde man and a shorter brunette whose eyes sparked. Bucky had assured the Asset they were friends. So, he sat, and stared at his shoes.

 

The Asset didn’t bother to look up to read their lips. He could have heard them, with hearing he was sure must be augmented, but he didn’t bother with that either, just let the vague sound of thrumming voices wash over him, not making sense out of any of it.

 

The Asset thought of running. It would be a smart decision. The blonde man would pose a problem, but evasive maneuvers could be taken, and the Asset might not be caught. From where he sat, he had a clear shot at the door.

 

But he didn’t.

 

First, because HYDRA was looking for him, and the Asset doubted he could evade them for long, and there was safety in numbers. And whatever this group could do to him couldn’t possibly be as bad. Second, because Bucky had promised he would help. Bucky seemed like someone the Asset could trust. Bucky knew things about Steve. The Asset had known the man on the bridge. And also, also, also…none of them had tried to hurt him yet. That was bizarre. They had had many opportunities. They had taken none. Shouldn't that be a sign in itself? But mostly… Mostly… Mostly, the Asset didn’t run because he knew he wasn’t all that adept at decision making. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He didn’t know himself. He didn’t _know_. And—the Asset wasn’t sure—he thought he wasn’t supposed to make his own decisions. He wasn’t supposed to do any thinking on his own. Maybe that was why he stayed. Because Bucky had words, Bucky knew things, Bucky was more sure. Bucky was the man the Asset shouldn’t kill, who hadn’t tried to hurt him yet.

 

Bucky told him the blond was Thor, and the brunette was Tony, and they were friends. He said something about them all being Avengers. The Asset thought Pierce might have mentioned Avengers, when he gave reasons, saying that after the endgame was underway, the Asset and STRIKE were to go after these Avengers, because they might have been the only ones able. The Asset didn’t think he was supposed to tell Bucky this.

 

Tony owned a building, Bucky said, and that building, in New York, was safe. He said that he thought it might be a good idea to go there, in a way that suggested the Asset had an opinion. Bucky asked if the Asset would be opposed to going to this building, this tower. The Asset wasn’t sure if he should say yes or no. He wasn’t sure if it was one of those questions about feelings or not, because he didn’t want to go, but he thought they were going to.

 

The Asset and Bucky were the last to enter the small plane, Quinjet, which stood poised on a small private airstrip. The Asset remembered he didn't like planes. The phrase jumped out into his mind. He remembered he had been in one, and it had gone down, and he had stayed in it till he blacked out. The Asset didn’t like planes, and he didn’t want to go to New York in one, but he didn’t think that was something he should say.

 

The Asset spent the trip seeing ice and cold and himself lying broken on the floor of that other plane, growing progressively _colder_. He flinched each time there was turbulence of any kind. Bucky told him he would be fine. The Asset wanted to tell him he _wouldn’t_ be, but that would be arguing. He just kept sinking progressively lower in his seat, metal fingers denting it, not caring about staying ready lest Thor should attack.

 

The tower was big and shiny. The Asset realized Tony was familiar, in a way, but not as himself. He looked like someone else. The Asset couldn’t find the memory of the man he was thinking of, so he let it go. There was a man named Barton. The Asset didn’t know what he thought of him. The Asset could take him, to be sure, though he would try to keep the fight close combat, as success would be harder if the sniper had a chance to get the Asset in his sights. But the Asset didn’t know what he thought of the man himself; when Barton looked at him, there was a sense of commiseration, a slight lack of judgment in his gaze, and the Asset couldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand Banner either. He looked at the Asset like he _understood_.

 

Bucky told the Asset, he would be fine. Bucky smiled at the Asset, Bucky called the Asset Steve. The Asset didn’t have a name. He had a call sign. The call sign had been reiterated time and time again.

 

Bucky asked the Asset if he was hungry. He said that there wasn’t much, as Tony only stocked the residential floors with nonperishables since no one really lived here, but he said he would get some things tomorrow. In the meantime, there were peanut butter sandwiches, if that was alright with him. The Asset wanted to ask what peanut butter was, but he didn’t think that was a good thing to ask.

 

Bucky told the Asset, he would be alright. The Asset thought he might have been trying to convince himself as much as the Asset. The Asset wanted to tell Bucky that he was wrong, but the Asset didn’t think that was something he should say.

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

 

James was glad, really, that Tony had showed up. He had a bit of a plan, now. He knew the team all had their reservations about Steve, but they were good with his presence, mostly. James thought it was mostly for him. Though, he supposed, they all had their soft spots for brainwashed people having done bad things against their will. 

 

James thought it might be a little strange for them. They had all—with the exception of maybe Natasha, who still knew of him, and Thor, who was learning—grown up with Captain America. They had idolized him along with America. Bruce had even tried to replicate the serum, and Tony had grown up with Howard. James had the notion that he wasn’t the only one who had trouble reconciling Steve Rogers with the ghost that haunted the halls of Stark Tower. Well, that was only half true; Steve made a habit of staying stuck in his room.

 

He came upon Natasha one night, washing dishes, a little vigorously. James sat at the kitchen counter, and there was nothing but silence between them for a while, broken by swishing water and the chiming of moving cutlery.

 

“You know you probably won’t get him back, right?” She said with no preamble.

 

“Yeah.” James whispered.

 

“No,” Natasha said, looking up at him this time, “I don’t mean that you _might_ not, I mean that you probably _won’t_.”

 

“You don’t know that.” James returned, just as quietly.

 

“No, I don’t.” Natasha replied, turning back to a bowl. “It’s hard.” She blurted eventually. “Coming back from something like that. You don’t. Not completely. They… They did it to me. The people I used to work for. So I know. …It—” Natasha paused. “…It’s hard.”

 

“…I’m sorry.” James said softly. “I didn’t know that.”

 

“Very few people do.” A few cups later, Natasha stopped, bracing her arms on the sides of the sink, scrub brush still in one soap-stained hand. “…If he…can come back from this… He’ll never be the same, but if he can…it’ll be a damn miracle.” Natasha watched white foam drip off the scrub brush. “…If you can bring him back from this…he’ll never be able to repay the favor.” James had never before really understood the friendship between her and Clint or the debt she owed him. He had always thought it had something to do with their partnership, the blood SHIELD agents seemed to define themselves by. He supposed he hadn’t been wrong; it was just in a different context.

 

Natasha snorted, and went back to finishing her dishes. “Anyway. The wisdom of an unemployed assassin, I guess.” She shut off the faucet and dried her hands on a towel. James found himself being watched for a moment, before Natasha leaned over the sink and kissed him.

 

Since the fall of SHIELD, James hadn’t known if the thing was still a thing or not. He had been unwilling to broach the subject of clarification. He supposed this was his answer. Natasha pulled away. James opened his mouth to say something, when a scream echoed through his floor; he had asked Tony if it was possible to remove the feature that made the walls soundproof, and, surprisingly, it was.

 

The scream was short; nothing more than Steve wrenching himself out of sleep; not quite a bloodcurdling sound, but more…terrified.

 

James had decided a while ago he would likely sleep better not knowing what Steve dreamed about.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The Asset knew what Bucky was doing. He knew he purposefully spun everything he said to the Asset into a question, so he could get used to answering. The Asset couldn’t help but resent him a little bit.

 

The only cutlery in Bucky’s drawers were plastic spoons. The Asset didn’t disagree with the decision. He had already woken up three times not knowing where he was, who anyone was, and with his first instinct being to attack.

 

The Asset spent his days confused. Sometimes so confused, he couldn’t see straight. He let Banner and Stark examine him, eventually, because it was deemed necessary. He spent the entire process listening to his heartbeat throb in his ears. According to their findings—what they gleaned from him, and what Romanov had apparently put on the internet—HYDRA’s procedure wouldn’t have worked, considering his serum. So they had had to modify it. The processes of retrieving and holding onto memory were made difficult, even painful. The Asset’s deviation from programming, and HYDRA’s inability to renew it, had made the act of holding onto memory possible. But whatever conditioning he had received made retrieving it still nearly impossible.

 

The Asset only half listened. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that buzzing in his ears, that ringing throb of things he couldn’t remember. But he could, a little. He remembered why some of the tools set about the room were familiar. The short man in a bow-tie had been…Zola, maybe.

 

The Asset knew very little. What he did know he hung onto like a lifeline, whispering it to himself in his mind, because he needed to know _something_. The only problem was that the things he remembered, when he thought about them, were so, so, horrifically _wrong_ —and he had decided not to listen to Pierce, hadn’t he? Yes, he had, so that left him with nothing, again, because the handful of lies didn’t count.

 

And the nothing he was left with was confusing. It made him question everything he didn’t know. It made him very, very afraid. It needled the flight-or-fight response that was kept locked away with muscle memory, untouched and unaltered and unharmed. Very rarely did the Asset settle on fight. So Bucky found him hiding under the bed quite often. The Asset didn’t know how to tell him why he was there. He didn’t have the words. He didn’t have the words for a lot of things.

 

The Asset didn’t know how to say that he only remembered about half his dreams, and half was too many. He didn’t know how to tell Bucky that he didn’t know what he wanted a lot of the time because he wasn’t _supposed_ to want things. But more, he didn’t know how to say that he felt guilty, always, when he tried to learn, when he tried to be Steve, because that was complete disobedience.

 

He didn’t know how to describe the feelings he felt, how their newfound presence felt. The Asset didn’t even know how to begin to describe what his mind felt like, every waking minute. It was a chaotic as his dreams, only in those, he didn’t wonder at the wrongness of it all; he was just swept up in the devastation.

 

The Asset didn’t know how to tell Bucky, who tried so hard to help him remember, who the Asset had learned wouldn’t hurt him, that the memories of Zola and the tortures weren’t even the worst of it; what haunted him every minute were the memories of what he had done, what his hands and his weapons had damaged and broken. The Asset didn’t tell him the details of what he could remember of the latter, though Bucky had said he could. He didn’t want the disappointment, and he didn’t want to ruin how Bucky saw Steve—the Asset could never repay him, but he could try.

 

He didn’t know how to explain the fear he always felt. But then, he didn’t know himself, really.

 

The Asset didn’t know how to ask if normal people felt this drowned. This rent open and trapped. He already knew normal people weren’t this cold all the time.

 

Without these words, the Asset didn’t know how to tell anyone the things he needed to tell them—and without them knowing, he didn’t know how to make them _understand_.

 

The Asset spent a lot of time under his bed, the front of his sweatshirt bunched in his mouth, screaming.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“How are you liking it here?” Banner asked. He had invited the Asset to his lab to see what he was working on, when the Asset had worked out how to ask what Banner did.

 

The Asset thought how to answer. He settled for a shrug. He didn’t know, anyway.

 

Banner nodded. The Asset watched him work for a bit. It was interesting, even if he only understood about half of what Banner did. The lab wasn’t bad either. It was different than the others. “Do you remember, what…happened?” Banner asked eventually.

 

The Asset watched Banner for a moment. He didn’t think the question was a bad one. The Asset thought he could answer it. His eyebrows came together as he thought of how. “…I don’t know.”

 

Banner nodded, like he understood. “Neither do I. You know…that I turn into…someone else, right?” The Asset nodded. “It’s the not knowing, isn’t it? That’s what hurts. I guess I _do_ know, but still, it’s all secondhand. It’s different. I mean, I don’t know if knowing _would_ really be better. Probably not. But, if…I could make sense of it all, I could know who I am. What I am. I don’t really know. I’m not sure. But, at the _very_ least, I could…punish myself. More effectively.”

 

The Asset nodded. Slowly.

 

Banner sighed, removing his glasses to rub his eyes. “I can’t say it isn’t your fault.” He whispered. “I can’t say you didn’t do anything wrong. It would be hypocritical of me. But…maybe…we aren’t bad people. Maybe we were in a wrong place at a wrong time. Maybe we got in the way of horrible people. And I don’t think it’s too late for us. I think we can still fix it.”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The Asset, eventually, let Stark take a look at the arm. He went about it nonchalantly, but the Asset got the sense he had been itching to examine it.

 

His lab wasn’t even a lab; it was a workshop. Metal bits were strewn everywhere, half-formed robots and Iron Man armor, and, in one case, half of a cold pizza. Strains of music drifted from speakers set high in the walls. It wasn’t clinical, and the Asset had little fear.

 

The rapid fire of sarcasm and popular culture references were intimidating, at first, but then the Asset realized he didn’t have to answer. Stark might have even preferred it. Just listening turned out to be nice.

 

“Can you feel any of this?” Stark asked, after a time, tapping the side of the Asset’s elbow.

 

“Yes.” The Asset replied.

 

“Seriously?”

 

“Yes.”

 

As it turned out, the Asset’s arm turned out to be very bitchin’ wetware.

 

“The star supposed to be a Red Army reference?” Stark asked, after the Asset had told him that he thought the arm had been installed before he came to HYDRA. “’Cause, I could take it off, you know. If it bothers you.”

 

The Asset accepted the offer. The plate of metal was still shaped like a star, but the paint had been scraped away, and it was all a uniform silver; it didn’t stand out so blatantly. It felt inexplicably better.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The Asset asked, one day, why there was a notebook in his room.

 

Bucky told him it was because he had been an artist, that he used to draw a lot, and had made a living illustrating comic books. The Asset remembered some sketches he had seen in the Smithsonian, but nothing else.

 

Sam, the other resident of this floor of Stark Tower, said that it might help him remember. Drawing, to some extent, could be classified as a muscle memory, and those the Asset could always recall. At the very least, Sam reasoned, it could be therapeutic.

 

So the Asset put pencil to paper. He didn’t actually make anything, mostly just oblong patches of grey. But the act of running the side or tip of a pencil over that plain white—inviting—surface, turning close-knit lines to a cohesive whole with the side of his thumb…there was something vaguely familiar about it.

 

The Asset spent a lot of time on the roof of the Tower. Mostly, because when he wasn’t there, he was with Bucky, and the Asset didn’t think monopolizing the man’s time like that was considerate. Besides, the Asset liked it on the roof. The skyline was a little wrong, but the Asset didn’t look at that too closely.

 

What the Asset spent his time looking at was the sky. It was always beautiful, always changing with the shift of clouds. It was vast, too, incomprehensively vast. It made the Asset feel small; vulnerable. But mostly, it was vast in a peaceful way. It made the Asset feel as if he could get lost in it; forget in a good way. Sunsets were always beautiful. These were the times, that the Asset looked at things in a certain way, felt that itch between his fingers.

 

He had taken to bringing the notebook up to the roof with him the last few times he came. The Asset had done little with it; mostly just held it in his hands—hand, really—or opened it to stare at a blank page.

 

But, on one occasion, the Asset did look at the skyline. It was different, somehow, but the sun was behind the Asset and cast a shine on the metal and glass, and the sky behind the buildings was about four shades of blue and full of white, fluffy clouds, so unlike New York sky.

 

The Asset was refining the edges of the window panes on an all-glass building, when he realized what he’d done.

 

An almost perfect approximation of the skyline stared up at the Asset from the notebook. Almost perfect but not quite, and a little to detailed, to linear, maybe, to be rightly called impressionism. Impressionism. The Asset didn’t know what that word meant, but he did. It frustrated him at first, the knowing but not, the _always_ knowing things he didn’t remember. The notion that he may never make sense of anything but muscle memory. He had remembered this skill, sure, but not the origins of those drawings in the Smithsonian, not the actual drawing of anything else, or those illustrated comics. If the Asset had been asked to explain what he had just done, he wouldn’t have been able to. Maybe he should be looking at trees, not forests, but still, he was just so _sick_ of this. But then he realized—

 

This _was_ another muscle memory. But it was a good one. He hadn’t hurt anyone. The Asset knew something, but it was harmless. And it was a knowledge of Steve’s. The Asset had been beginning to wonder if HYDRA had really taken everything, if the only memories he would ever find would be the Soldier’s. But apparently not.

 

Apparently there was hope.

 

But that was still all abstract. What struck the Asset as wondrous, what made him handle the sketchbook gingerly, as if it was a precious commodity; what made him tip his head back and look at those shifting, fluffy clouds as something like a smile cameto his expression—was the knowledge that he hadn’t thought while he was drawing.

 

The Asset had often wished the voices in his head would leave him alone.

 

And he had found a way to make them go away.


	10. Chapter 10

_**"Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn't take it."** _

_**-Tom Stoppard, quoted in 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'** _

 

 

 

James crept through the remnants of the third floor of an old warehouse; what was left of an AIM facility after Tony and the explosives in his suit were done with it. The worst of his injuries was a gash across one forearm, and the mission hadn’t even been demanding enough to require the Hulk’s presence, so Bruce was left in the Quinjet, in the event medical treatment should become necessary. Steve was fine enough to be left in the Tower alone, by now, but even if he wasn’t, Sam was there too, and when he was at the VA, there was JARVIS. All in all, James felt about as well as one could, after a fight of middling intensity.

 

The mission could almost be called a success, but the Avengers weren’t done yet, and complacency wouldn’t do. James peered around a bend in the hall before he entered it, gun in hand, shield hanging across his back. He rarely ever used it in combat. He was Captain America to this generation, sure, but the shield was still little more than propaganda—at any rate, even the few times James did use it, it was as a defense mechanism; he had never been able to achieve wielding it as a weapon or a projectile, as Steve had. And, as the Avengers already had a sniper—and, if he had to be honest with himself, Clint, who had been an archer most of his life, had better aim—James played the role he usually had when the Commandoes hadn’t had a need for a sniper. He relied on his guns and whatever fighting skills Natasha had helped him add to his repertoire, another soldier on the ground—hence the creeping through the warehouse, looking for any signs of life or opposition.

 

 _See anything, Sarge?_ Clint’s disembodied voice asked through James’ comm.

 

He was about to answer, ‘not yet’, but then there was a jolt of electricity connecting with the back of his neck. His last memory is convulsing as if he was a puppet and someone had just jerked up his strings, and then the floor rushed up to meet his nose.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

She sees the way Steve tentatively follows James more often than not, as if he isn't quite sure he belongs or James wants him to, but braves the uncertainty because he sure as hell knows being alone is much worse. (Obviously, James is usually around Steve. Natasha doesn't care, she has never been needy, never wants to be.)

 

Natasha had done the same to Clint, when he had brought her in, if it had been less pronounced, in a smaller amount, harder to read. She supposes it's because she had had a different experience when she had veered away from her programming, programming that still hasn't really left. (And that was different too. No machines—just a man saying the same things over and over and over, till Natasha believed him, till she knew what he was going to say and 'knew' what it meant, till she was tired of listening and tired of trying not to, till she had achieved the level of acceptance they wanted. It was a method that left her with far less humanity, too much blame.)

 

Also, Natasha supposes it's because Steve has a past he can't remember but wants to find. She hadn't had that either. She had been taken at four years old. She had had no personality to loose. 

 

She wouldn't take anything back, because she can't, and wondering is pointless and painful, but she does have regrets. They're there, not thought of, because she can't; but she knows they're there, feels them there.

 

Natasha isn't in the habit of wondering about what-ifs either, because they're a mess and pointless and painful. But she sometimes wonders, with vague curiosity, what that four year old would have done with her life. 

 

It's sad that it never was, she never was, and it's a different kind of sad that Steve lost everything. 

 

(Her biggest worry is still that he's going to wake up one night as the Winter Soldier and stab James in the eye. It probably always will be, pity be damned. Pity can go fuck itself. That's what people don't know about her: She can pity. She can. She's capable. But she can ignore it. Work past it. She's enough of a machine; animal.)

 

But the worry is because not trusting is her default. To be honest, Natasha thinks Steve is most likely to stay curled in a ball under his bed until he heals—if he ever does. (To be honest, if Steve kills anyone, Natasha thinks it'll be himself. Or maybe she's just projecting.)

 

But then the man actually starts to pull himself up, and the team starts to help him, and Natasha finds James might not have been so delusional after all. (And that wasn’t at all hypocritical of her, seeing as she had thought her own prospects and Clint’s ability to help were laughable as well.)

 

She’s admittedly caught off guard when Clint’s query is met with silence; when she takes the stairs two at a time—leaving the floor she’s clearing, because she’s just a tad too attached to this man—and finds there is no James to be found, not even a body.

 

It takes them some time, too much time, crucial time, to realize it isn’t AIM behind his capture. Natasha had theories as to why HYDRA would want him, and alive, ranging from marginally fixable to bad to worse, if in different respects. No one disputes Sam wanting to join the hunt. It’s his right as much as anyone else’s, and he’s been in the thick of the HYDRA debacle.

 

It is, also, Rogers’ right, maybe more than anyone’s. He’s been molded and crushed by HYDRA since before anyone was aware he hadn’t died or destroyed them. He also knows more about HYDRA than any of them, even if in itself it isn’t much, and that could prove invaluable.

 

Tony ends up being the one to recruit him, handing him the shield and weapons he had apparently pulled from the wreckage of that motel.

 

“Did you know he killed Howard?” He asks her, later, in one of the Tower’s many hallways.

 

“Yeah.” Natasha replies. Because the man has a right to know who helped Obadiah Stane kill his father, and because she has been trying to be truthful with him, since she had dropped a copy of Natalie’s report in his workshop.

 

“And you didn’t think to mention it?” Tony returns, disgruntled.

 

“How exactly were we supposed to do that? Write it on a cake?” Natasha says, and then she sighs. “Sometimes…those threads are better not to pull.”

 

Tony gives her a look. “So you two didn’t…connive?”

 

“What?”

 

“I don’t know… I mean, I could be wrong, but it seemed like you didn’t have a lot of options for where to go, and…easier to get help if you don’t have to explain why I shouldn’t bother, right?”

 

It’s Natasha’s turn to give a look. “You really think James and I would do that?”

 

Tony sighs, scrubbing his face with one of his oil-stained hands. “I don’t know… Yes. No. I don’t know. It hasn’t gotten any easier to get a read on you, you know, and I think James would do just about anything for that basket case of his.”

 

“…I honestly don’t know. That could have been part of it. We did need a plan, and when you came offering…we didn’t have access to that cake, for one thing. And really, we just didn’t…”

 

“It didn’t come up, huh?” Tony says, black humor in the corners of his expression. “You know, contrary to popular belief, I am aware the world doesn’t revolve around me.”

 

“Breaking news.” Natasha replies, matching the slight upward tilt to Tony’s mouth. A slice of time lapses between them. “…How’d you find out?”

 

“Research. Internet.” Tony replies. “Wanted to see if Obie… If Stane was HYDRA.”

 

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

 

“What was I supposed to say, Natasha? The man has as much trouble with words as Fitz—I can’t…tar and feather him for killing a man he used to be friends with. I doubt he even remembers.”

 

“That’s very big of you.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

“…Absolution’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Natasha says, having no one meaning, for either of them.

 

“It is.”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Natasha has seen footage from the war—Captain America and the Howling Commandos kicking Axis ass. Howard Stark had in his possession better footage than was given to the public; filmed with better equipment, of subjects not suitable for ten-year-olds to see. And SHIELD had, of course, had copies of the footage well before Stark’s crate of personal effects had been given to Tony, so Natasha’s seen it, too.

 

No one has ever denied the effectiveness of Captain America’s legend, and those with the proper clearance have never doubted his skill. But, Natasha finds early on, the Winter Soldier is in a different class entirely. In the field, a thing of beauty and grace (which is as wrong a description as any, but it’s Natasha’s opinion, just as hunters marvel at the majesty of a caribou’s severed head on a plaque; opinions come with one’s territory). It’s an efficiency she’s seen in few places, maybe never before; efficiency backed with a wellspring of raw power. She’s seen it before, in that mall, but somehow it’s different, when one swaps out the civvies for uniforms, when she isn’t pulling herself out of a pile of sweats with Juicy stamped on the ass, with the addition of weapons—and those are a different matter entirely. Captain America was as dexterous and deft with that shield as anyone could be, except his reincarnated self. (It’s amazing what training can do).

 

But Natasha has a sense—no, she has a knowledge—that, however much progress Rogers might have made, if the urgency of what his previous masters could do to James was nonexistent, the Avengers would once again find themselves at a loss for how to deal with the puddle of what once was a cohesive, human whole.

 

As it is, there are times when gazes are a little too vacant; pupils too big or too small, muscles too tensed or shoulders too drooped. It never lasts long enough for Natasha to worry over it, though, and his uses outweigh potential steps backwards. (Although, Natasha knows, if a slip should occur, if something should shift into—or out of—place, observation will be a moot point. The Winter Soldier has been molded into something meticulous, searching for a mark and continuing to seek them out with mild tenacity and boundless patience. But, once the target is in his sights, or if a situation calls for quick reactions, the kill is fast and efficient and brutal. But not brutal out of bloodlust--Natasha’s found sanguinary countenances to matter little; no, the real terror lies in several necks snapping as quickly and quietly as possible, in the person with the skill and willingness to do it.)

 

They’re all playing with fire, keeping Rogers around, but Natasha’s already admitted she’s too emotionally attached to James, and that’s how it is in this business, anyway.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

It takes time, too much time—really only about two weeks, but that’s too much time for these things—to get a lead on where HYDRA might be hiding James; a facility in Estonia, tucked away in a frozen forest.

 

The team manages to make it through the trees, a pre-transformation Bruce trailing along inconspicuously, and they aren’t detected. Or, at least, HYDRA is waiting, which could be more worrisome.

 

The facility comes into view. It’s a large grey rectangular building, situated in a small clearing between the trees, completely industrial but for the air of cutting-edge technology about the place. It sets Natasha’s teeth on edge.

 

They linger in the space just before the trees start to thin, each making their own assessments before they decide what to do.

 

Then the shooting starts—or, bombing, actually, might be more accurate. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natasha's POV!


	12. Chapter 12

 

 

The Asset huddled in the snow as the heavy rain of bullets descended, shield over his head. He crouched with his back against the giant pine that had keeled over some time in the past, piled with snow and dirt and offering much needed cover. The Asset craned his neck back to the building, but didn’t see the shooters—although, if Barton hadn’t seen anything worth taking a shot at, the Asset had poor prospects. In all likelihood, they were shooting from inside the building, through windows or holes made by panels that had been pulled aside.

 

The Asset is doing this, as most of the Avengers do the same, and Stark attempts to convince Banner’s alter ego to stand down, when a bullet hits the pine in front of him, from a high vantage point to reach behind their barricade. It set itself apart from the throbbing rain; it was a deliberate shot, deliberately missed.

 

A second bullet hits, sliding neatly into the hole made by its predecessor. It was a message—a message for the Asset.

 

It took him a moment to find what it meant, then a moment for the realization to sink in.

 

The Asset didn’t have a choice. The Asset didn’t have a choice, and they knew it.

 

He really didn’t have a choice.

 

The Asset saw Romanov out of the corner of his eye; she spared him a wondering glance as he deprived himself of the extra layer of protection his shield provided, tossing it on the ground. The glance lingered into a look as he began to unbuckle and slide out of the harness he wore to hold his weapons, and Romanov found realization as he pulled the knives out of his boots.

 

“Rogers…” She said once, something that might have been regret in her expression. The Asset watched back. He knew that she knew what kind of position they were in—they would be shot, eventually, and even if Banner and perhaps Thor could prevail, it was not an optimal outcome. At the very least, any chance they had of rescuing Bucky would disintegrate. They were, in a way, cut of the same cloth, the Asset and Romanov—even if Steve wasn’t. They knew, better than soldiers did, even, what they could gain by optimal outcomes, and what could be lost by anything less.

 

Romanov didn’t say anything else.

 

The Asset shot a flare between the trees, and it would have been humorous, under other circumstances, how quickly the rain of bullets stopped. _When dogs follow their master’s commands, they get rewards_. That was the thought circling in the Asset’s mind.

 

As the Avengers began to wonder what the absence of fired shots meant, the Asset rose fluidly, climbing over the tree and settling into slow, even steps.

 

When he was about halfway across the no man’s land, a door revealed itself, concrete sliding up, and a body was thrown out. The Asset didn’t stop walking, but his eyes took in every part of Bucky he could see, almost eagerly, because if Bucky was still alive, if he was going to be okay, then…well, then this wouldn’t be as horrible. _The bone the master knew the dog would cower for_ , he thought, and he realized the Estonian forest was cold. He hadn’t noticed before; he had had something else to focus on.

 

Bucky did seem alright—he was breathing, anyway, and his injuries seemed to be topical, for the most part. The Asset heard Romanov in his comm, evenly prodding her comrades into action, the voice of poise and reason in what the Asset thought was confusion, shock. He thought these people might have like him. He thought that would have been nice.

 

A suited Stark retrieved Bucky, and then took to the air. The rest of the team wasn’t far behind in clearing out. It was good. They were safe, all of them. The Asset kept walking, the door Bucky had been thrown out of still open and waiting.

 

The Asset was nearing it when a small device shot out and attached itself to his artificial arm, sending a wave of electricity through the metal and effectively disabling it. The Asset made no move to take it off, though being well and truly defenseless struck him to the core.

 

The Asset continued to take controlled steps to the door, pushing down the fear he had so easily brushed aside in a stronger moment, full of a purpose more immediate than his fate. The Asset realized, as the door slid down behind him, he didn’t know what his fate was. He hoped they would just kill him this time. Somehow, though, he didn’t think he would get off that easily.

 

His eyes adjusted almost instantaneously to the lack of light in the dank, metal-lined hall, no more than a faint, cool glow coming from deeper inside. The Asset wondered why there was no one there, as he continued down the hall to some fresh hell.

 

The Asset came to the hall’s end, eventually, his pulse hammering against his neck. The wide room he looked into seemed almost square, because of the four corners that met in right angles, but for the bowed-out sides that gave it a circular feel. He stepped into the room with deliberate, tentative footfalls. There was something wrong with the room, he knew, he could feel.

 

The Asset made it to the center of the room, when the floor pulled away to either side with mechanical swiftness, plunging the Asset down into a pool of water; a jar, really, a large fish tank, lit from a ring of blue lights about the bottom.

 

The device fixed to the Asset’s arm must have still been functional, because the electricity was what made him convulse as if he was having a seizure, until the device was finally spent, but that wasn’t even the Asset’s problem.

 

No; what set him screaming and made him desperate enough to inhale lungfuls of water, as he kicked and clawed at the now closed door in the ceiling, was the water itself.

 

The water—the water was cold. The water was _freezing_.

 

The Asset pounded on the ceiling with as much force as he could muster with his functional arm, too desperate to care that his watery pleas were falling on deaf ears. The cold sucked his sense away with his warmth.

 

The bluish light ringing the bottom of the tank shut off, and the Asset shrieked waterlogged fear into utter, empty darkness, and a sentient cold that _knew_ the chaos it caused.


	13. Chapter 13

 

 

Natasha sits next to James, who sleeps in an oversized hospital bed. He hasn’t woken up yet. Natasha knows what one of the first questions out of his mouth will be. She finds she doesn’t think she’ll know what to say to him.

 

It was all for Rogers, that she knows. James was as unimportant to HYDRA as the taxi that gets you from one place to another. They would have killed him, if his release wasn’t pivotal to their plot. They could have killed them all. (Natasha hates that. She always has. She hates being at the mercy of others, and even worse, she hates being spared at their benevolent behest, or because the pawn is no longer necessary and too much trouble to kill. The Black Widow does the using. She has for several years now.)

 

And Natasha knows James will see it too. She knows how guilty he’ll make himself feel until they find him—the self-sacrificial streak James and Rogers have in regards to each other is a mile wide.

 

(If they find him, of course—not that she’s mentioning that to James. He either knows, or deserves, by now, not to.)

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

They left him alone, in a frigid cell with no light. They left him alone long enough to load the brushes for the artists, long enough to drive himself half-crazy with wondering what they would do, so that he would have been torturing himself long before they began.

 

It worked.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

What they were doing was different. The machine was the same, it was all _the same_ , but the Asset could tell, they were calibrating for something different. He thought it was familiar, but he couldn’t tell.

 

The pain was the same, too, but it was different. It didn’t make him forget—he felt what they did as they did it, and under the pain was one of the strangest sensations the Asset had ever felt. The Asset was aware of what they did as they did it, so he was there enough to wonder what was being done to him, to wonder—

 

There has always been a part under the cold—or parts, or a consciousness, or perhaps a whole world. There used to be a woman, used to be a man, there used to be another woman, there used to be a neighborhood, there used to be a cause, there used to be a notebook filled with lines softened with the side of his thumb. There has always been a part of the Asset that knew what the private joke was about.

 

There has always been something under the cold; a life, a mind.

 

From that point on, Steve didn’t stop screaming for more than ten minutes.

 


	14. Chapter 14

 

 

It’s a strange sensation, Steve thinks; to be, but not. It isn’t a choice, it isn’t a question, it isn’t Hamlet. It’s an existence, of some kind, a dual existence; it’s being left behind and pushed forward. He doesn’t much care for it. But what he wants doesn’t really matter, in the grand or minute scheme of things.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

He hears them talking. They want to replace him with the Soldier, make him new. But they don’t think he could survive that, they think he’d be reduced to nothingness, and they want to use him.

 

They talk about partial removal, conditioning. But apparently, the same issues exist. And that’s what they’ve been doing, and so far he’s been unresponsive. And if it does work, they don’t want him to resurface one day—it’s not the most effective option, they say.

 

They settle for burying him.

 

Steve doesn’t know what that means, but it sounds as good a description as any. They don’t replace him with the Soldier; they just slide someone else over him, like repainting a canvas. The old painting is still there, but essentially, it isn’t.

 

Steve fights, in the beginning, as much as he knows how. He screams and tries to escape, tries to break out onto the surface, tries to will himself to do something on his own, anything, even just _blink_.

 

But he can’t—he never can. And when they send the Asset into the field, the things Steve sees the Asset do just shock him into silence. But then, Steve realizes, it’s him doing the things.

 

The Asset is the one who gets to move, to speak; it’s the Asset’s eyes Steve sees through, the Asset’s hands that do all those terrible things. It’s the Asset, but Steve knows it’s him, knows it’s _him_ committing heinous crimes. (And even if it wasn’t him, it’s still horrifying to see.)

 

The guilt, it does something to him, it twists something. Steve tries to fight again, but it’s nonsensical, because he doesn’t know how; it’s running through a maze for the sake of needing to _get out_ , it’s ramming against a door you know won’t budge. So after a while, Steve just watches, transfixed.

 

It’s a horrible thing, to be stuck, mute and paralyzed, watching, and watching, and watching. It’s a terrible experience, to be, but not.

 

It’s a terrible realization, to figure out you are, essentially, immortal. Steve can’t fight, and he can’t escape, and he can’t make anything stop. Transfixed is actually a very good word for what he is.

 

Steve actually tries to kill himself, once, a final effort. He doesn’t know how, he doesn’t try to engage the Asset, he doesn’t try to kill his body; he just tries to end Steve. It’s really no wonder he fails. It’s a very unorganized attack.

 

Steve never manages to ignore anything, but he does retreat as far as he can. (The space they left him with is too small for ignoring the Asset. It’s too small for much of anything, except existence. He finds that out his one and only foray into introspection, when he realizes, though he _is_ Steve, though he does remember who he is and what he’s been because he lived through it—he can’t exactly _remember_ any of it. There’s no room for memories. It’s another thing that always keeps him in the stasis they put the Asset in between missions; he can’t just relive past experiences and forget where he is. he doesn’t know if it was deliberate—he thinks once the Asset was in place, he ceased to matter—but he thinks Zola would have appreciated it. In other words—Steve can’t hide.)

 

He retreats, as far as he can, and it’s a weakness he allows himself—forever is, after all, a long time to stick it out. He retreats, but it isn’t far enough, and he is still always aware of the Asset, like a semi-coherent white noise. It drives Steve insane, but then, he already knows he’s gone crazy. It’s one of the few things he knows for sure.

 

Steve Rogers is stuck under layers of the Asset, but sometimes—whether through outside stimuli or Zola’s lapses or something else—sometimes, they are both the same.

 

Not to say Steve ever comes out on top. But Steve floats, and the Asset sinks, and there’s an amalgamation of some kind. Steve grows hazy with the Asset’s nothingness, and the Asset hesitates with Steve’s sense that something is very, very _wrong_ here. They’re still separate, but they _aren’t_. (This may be less strange than Steve thinks it is; sometimes, he gets the notion that the Asset isn’t an entirely separate entity, that he is more Steve in a blank state.)

 

They correct these slips before anything can come of them. Neither Steve nor the Asset are aware of the amalgamations when they occur, and so can never take advantage of them.

 

Steve hears them talking, sometimes, when he bothers. The burying is their best option, but it still isn’t foolproof. The amalgamations prove that. But they speculate, sometimes, on the replacing and the partial removal, on their pros and cons relative to scientific advances.

 

But the words wash over him, like the Asset’s blood. It affects him, but he’s ceased to care. Steve stays curled in his alcove, and he lets himself drift where he may. It’s hard to tell the passing of time, under the lid of whatever they keep him in, but he’s been floating for years now, and there aren’t any signs of stopping.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

There is an amalgamation, when he sees Bucky on that bridge. Steve might surface this time more than he ever has before, if his use of the English language is proof of anything. In any case, Pierce seems to think so. In any case— 

 

In any case, Steve knows the man on the bridge, and he watches, he pays attention, though he hasn’t in years. 

 

His world starts to right itself, as the technicians repair the arm’s damaged wiring. But to right itself it must admit it was twisted upside down in the first place, and Steve has a feeling of vertigo. The Asset doesn't react well to it, and the Asset was always one for hostile reactions. 

 

"Prep him." Steve hears Pierce say, and he sinks a little at that, because that was Bucky, that was Bucky on that bridge, and he didn’t want to fade back to black yet. The scientist, who took over for Zola when he died, tells Pierce the Asset has been out of cryo too long, tells him he is erratic. "Then wipe him, and start over." Pierce replies, and then he leaves.

 

They have always had a contingency plan in place, in case Steve ever won out over the Asset. It is something between the replacing and the partial removal; a violent regaining of control. They have refrained, however, because they never know how he will respond. But, this is their grand finale, this is their crescendo, this is the culmination of all they have been working towards. And Pierce had given the order so quickly, so without any of the previous hesitation. They are desperate, foaming at the mouth, beyond ready for their new world order. 

  
So Steve is buried, much deeper. He doesn't even know where he is anymore. He might not be anywhere. He might not be at all.

  



	15. Chapter 15

 

 

James caught his breath, sprawled in the snow outside of the HYDRA base they had just stormed in Canada. It was the third they had attacked, but all turned out to be empty of what they’ve been looking for.

 

James wouldn’t have put it past Schmidt or Zola to take Steve back for personal vendettas, but they were both dead, and the HYDRA that was left was an organization that practiced professionalism. The Winter Soldier, as valuable as he might have been, had been used fully. The Algorithm had failed, and their priorities had shifted; they didn’t need him anymore, in as much as they might lament the loss of their favorite weapon.

 

The only explanation left was that Steve had dangerous information. HYDRA must know by now that he was remembering; or at the very least, they must assume he had malfunctioned on that Helicarrier. He hadn’t, after all, gone back to them afterwards.

 

But that was still only half of it. HYDRA, in the precarious position they were in, wouldn’t have risked engaging the Avengers just to contain information. For that, they could have just sent a sniper; Steve had spent a lot of time on the roof. They want study. They must want to know how he had slipped out from under their noose, so they could fill the holes in their process. Like an autopsy, only much worse.

 

As they had advanced, James was struck by how frigid they kept the base. They had found Steve, eventually, strapped down to a heavy chair in front of a tall, circular machine. He had been connected to an IV; a barbiturate in one arm to sedate him, an amphetamine in the other to shock him awake. There had been no visible wounds; he had seemed healthy enough. But that wasn’t really what James had been worried about.  

 

HYDRA had put up a fight, but the team pushed them back, mostly thanks to Bruce and his alter ego. Hydra was and always has been bent on survival at any cost, so when things started to turn irreversibly in the team’s favor, they had cut their losses and run. The only problem was that they had activated a self-destruct mechanism. The parallels between this occasion and the rescue mission Steve had taken on to save him and the 107th weren’t lost on James.

 

They had made it out of the building with barely enough time, and now lay strewn about the snow outside the base as it burned.

 

James staggered to his feet, taking in his surroundings, seeing that the rest of the team was likewise recovering. Steve had dragged himself to a tree, and he now sat huddled against it, his eyes squeezed shut, forearms covering his head, as if the world was too abrasive.

 

When Bruce was otherwise occupied, Tony and JARVIS took over the team’s medical duties, and so he was the one to crouch in front of Steve. He was still disoriented from the stimulant and the sedative, and so when he stopped shivering and looked up at a suited Tony, who had removed his faceplate, his look was blank. He was squinting, too, as if things were too bright.

 

They didn’t take the proper precautions. Maybe because James wasn’t the only one emotionally invested in Steve’s retrieval anymore. And they weren’t prepared, either; some of them had only just gotten up off the snow.

 

James realized all this in a fraction of a second, but it was a fraction of a second too late, because Steve’s eyes had cleared—though, they were still blank.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

It was Thor that had finally pinned Steve to the ground, so he would stop moving long enough to be sedated. It was a good thing Thor was Asgardian, or the slash across the neck Steve had dealt him with the knife he had taken off James would have been fatal. As it was, he still hadn’t tried to speak or remove the bunch of gauze he had pressed against his throat.

 

The Quinjet flew on autopilot. Steve spent the flight sedated, and the team spent the flight in silence. So did James. The only things he thought of were the lights he saw blinking in the cockpit.

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

 

 

If someone spends too much time folded unmoving in a corner, movement, when it is tried, is stiff, slow, and painful. If someone spends years without speaking, they almost forget how, and when they try, it’s hoarse and painful, barely audible. If someone is locked in the dark for a long enough time, light is obscenely bright. If someone is kept in silence long enough, any sound is discordantly loud.

 

Everything is large, shrill, and painful, when someone is hauled out of a prison, out of internalized sensory deprivation. In a sudden, fluid instant, Steve is here. He’s here, he’s free, and the feeling is something like electrocution. He realizes, he doesn’t like it here. After all, he had stopped fighting a long time ago. He’s grown used to his nothingness. Steve realizes, he would like it back. Is that a bad thing to wish for? He doesn’t know anymore.

 

In any case—

 

In any case, Steve tries his hardest to recreate to space at the back of his mind he’s lived in for so long. He succeeds.

 

He succeeds, until the being gets to him, and he starts to notice things. (It’s strange, noticing things himself, and not secondhand.)

 

It’s almost strange, being alone, being just him. There’s no one else in his head. No Asset, which in his very essence was nothing; nothing, but threaded with HYDRA’s subconscious somethings. So then, it isn’t the Asset’s absence Steve notices, but HYDRA’s. It is equally strange to be able to move when he wants. He doesn’t exactly try, because he’s forgotten he can, but when it happens, it always surprises him.

 

They have him in a room; it’s as comfortable as a bedroom, but Steve knows it’s a cell. If he decided to get up and check the door, he would likely find he couldn’t open it. He remembers someone coming in, in the beginning, but it had been when he was trying to go back to wherever he had been, and he hadn’t paid attention. No one has come in in a while. Steve thinks Bucky had been the one to come in, so then, he thought he was with the good guys, this time. Now is the first time Steve stops to question Bucky’s presence. Bucky had died, years ago. It makes no sense. He doesn’t understand.

 

Steve tries to make sense of things, then. He tries to work out what had happened. The past is dangerous and confusing, though. The past is a strange thing. Steve gets a little lost in it.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

James watched Steve through the cameras in the room he was kept. Watched him practice listless nothingness, sob, hyperventilate, pace for fifty hours straight, huddle in a corner, and change expressions so rapidly it looked like he was having a silent argument with himself.

 

They didn’t know what HYDRA had done to him, but they had theories. James wanted to go in and talk to him, because the watching got too horrible, but the team—especially Natasha, Tony, and Sam—managed talk him out of it, or completely bar the door. They were all afraid Steve would kill him, like he had tried to in Canada; they still didn’t know if he had been escaping or attacking, or if he would again.

 

But after a while, they decided to risk it. James was just cutting his losses at this point.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

As he slipped through the door, James thought about how hard this all had been. Harder than he had ever thought it would be, and he had been expecting it to be excruciating. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t as it should be. If anyone should have been the Winter Soldier, it should have been him. It should have been him because Zola had taken _him_ first, and it should have been him because Steve was  _good._ He had always been the better of the two, and James should have been the Winter Soldier.

 

Steve didn’t respond to his presence, just sat where he had for the last fourteen hours, cocooned in a blanket. After a while of standing with his back against the door, James moved slowly to lean on the wall across from Steve; and after a while of this, he slid down to a crouch. He ended up sitting on the floor next to Steve but not too close, but it took some time—like approaching an animal of unknown friendliness.

 

“Steve,” James said quietly, finally. At the sound of the name, Steve just…crumpled, the pile of blankets sinking lower down the wall. James bit the inside of his lip.

 

It took a long while of quiet coaxing, but eventually, Steve started watching him from behind the edge of the slate blue blanket. James kept talking, not really knowing what exactly he was saying but not thinking it mattered overmuch.

 

Steve just kept looking at him, pupils far too small, as if he was hanging on every word, and they were of the greatest importance. His expression collapsed, eventually. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered, his head had dropping down on his knees, and James couldn’t see his face anymore from behind the blanket.

 

“You don’t have to be, Steve,” James said, assuming he was thinking of Canada. “You were scared, you…you didn’t know.”

 

“No. I don’t— Not that,” Steve replied, raising his head but keeping his eyes on the floor. After a moment, he looked up at James, straight into his eyes, his pupils now so large their blackness nearly swallowed the blue of his irises. “I… I remember,” he said, expression contorted by something very like agony. “I was there.”

 

 


	17. Epilogue

 

 

Bucky told him what happened, everything he needed to know that he was able to tell him, and Steve returned the favor, as much as he could. The years spent as the Asset were still confusing, but Steve might have already understood most of what happened after D.C.

 

The period where the memories swam like a heat mirage had been when they had used the contingency plan to replace him with the Asset. But either because when they had implemented it they had been rushed and disorganized, or because the procedure was unstable to begin with, he had malfunctioned again.

 

And when he had malfunctioned, there had been another amalgamation, one more thorough and binding than any of the others. Steve had become the Asset, and the Asset had become Steve. There was no difference. Looking back, he remembered everything that had happened between the Helicarrier crashing and the machine bringing him back to the fore. But during that time, it hadn’t been him doing any of it. And looking back, Steve supposed that, though he hadn’t been anywhere in any capacity, he might have been what made the Asset a real person. But, because he _had_ been the Asset, he couldn’t rightly remember anything, or really penetrate the confusion, as much as he may have tried to work past it. He couldn’t access Steve, and the amalgamation couldn’t be complete, because the contingency plan had been designed to bury Steve, and it had succeeded.

 

The Asset hadn’t had the words, because he hadn’t known what to say. (He was, after all, no more than a puppet pretending to be a real boy.) He didn’t know what needed to be said, because he wasn’t the one to say them. And without those words, the Asset hadn’t been able to make anyone understand. He hadn’t known himself what needed to be understood, but he had needed the Avengers to know something, he had needed to explain something. Steve supposed he had been the one to have the urgency. He supposed what he had wanted them to understand, was that he was there, somewhere, and he wanted to get out.

 

And now he was. He was, and HYDRA had made him his own shadow for so long, Steve didn’t know what to do anymore. He did a lot of nothing. A lot of reintegrating on the surface, with a whole lot of apathy underneath. He drew some, but everything he did came out looking angry, somehow. Steve did what he was supposed to do. It took him a while to realize that he didn’t have to be Captain America anymore, that it wasn’t expected of him; that it was even a moot point with these people, who’d seen him at his worst.

 

Steve didn’t know who the hell he was anymore. He didn’t know who Steve was anymore. He hated the Winter Soldier, and he was too tired to be Captain America, and he didn’t know who just _Steve_ was. The kid from Brooklyn. Where had he gone? Maybe Steve was naïve to think he could be that person, after everything that’d happened. He supposed he had to discover some new self.

 

But to do that, he had to know what to do. He could play the pillar of strength, appease those around him, and keep himself blank on the inside. But that would be hiding, not healing, and Steve had to heal. He _wanted_ to heal. He didn’t want to stay _stuck_ here.

 

He didn’t know what to do with himself. Steve didn’t know how the Asset had wielded the metal arm so smoothly, but he couldn’t. Not to say it didn’t work, in and of itself—it did everything Steve asked of it, as if it was really part of him. But it wasn’t, and whenever Steve saw it out of the corner of his eye, he started, and usually dropped or crushed whatever he was holding. It felt wrong, the extra weight hanging off his shoulder, unbalancing his steps. And he wasn’t entirely used to the new body the serum had given him before he crashed the Valkyrie, either, and so there was still a bit of that. He felt like there were somethings crawling between himself and the skin that fit all wrong, making him uncomfortable and itchy. One day, it took Sam pointing it out for Steve to realize that he had scratched off the skin on the back of his neck, to place the wet warmth as his own blood.

 

They couldn’t just take his mind, Steve thought, sometimes. They had to take his body too. Or maybe what he was feeling was the lack of mind.

 

Steve didn’t like the place he was in. But he’s been floating for years now. And there were still no signs of stopping.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

After it was Steve there, really Steve, things…well, they didn’t go downhill, but they leveled out. It became less of a plunge, less of a climb. James found it very characteristic. Steve was always too brave for his own good. James couldn’t exactly judge; he hadn’t talked about much of anything to do with his time in Zola’s care, still hasn’t. But he didn’t know if this was different or not.

 

Not to say James was under the impression that he was the stronger of the two, and not to say Steve hadn’t earned the time to deal with things in his own way and in his own time. But when things leveled out, it was into blankness. And James knew Steve. He’d always known that while he would be the one to curse Zola and Pierce and the people who were _really_ responsible, Steve would be the one to quietly agree, wearing a stoic face, while inside he was killing himself in the slowest way possible. Torturing himself with replaying the things he’d done over and over, because he believed it was his penance, and moving on wouldn’t be right. And James knew that was what Steve was doing now, even as he watched, on the other side of a cliff and unable to help, as Steve tried to claw his way out of a dark hole.

 

So when he woke one day and found, through JARVIS, that Steve wasn’t in the Tower, he was scared, of course, but not exactly surprised.

 

 

 

******  

 

 

 

In about four years, Steve would be a century old, and he felt every day of it, for all it didn’t show. Or maybe it did—not in the lines on his face but in the scars on his soul, and those are only the lines that ever matter.

 

He wondered, sometimes, what his mother would think of what he’d become, were she still alive. Correction—sometimes, he wondered if it would be possible to escape her disgust. Steve thought about the things she’d told him, too, sometimes; about forgetting the past and moving on. Which he couldn’t do.

 

Steve wondered, too, what Erskine would have thought of what he’d done with his serum. He had thought Schmidt’s use of it was abhorrent, though, and so Steve supposed he already knew what the good doctor would think.

 

Steve had thought about making the journey to Washington to see Peggy, before she died, though he had known it would have been too risky. (She finally died a few weeks after Bucky rescued him from the HYDRA base, after he had remembered. Steve thought there must have been something poetic about that.) He wondered how he would have gone about apologizing for poisoning SHIELD, Peggy’s attempt at carrying on his cause and striking a blow of her own for justice. (Steve thought they could have made a go of it, if he hadn’t disappeared. He thought he might have liked to learn to dance.)

 

Steve remembered everyone he’d killed. During the war, during the Soldier. Of course, his angsts about the war were mostly about the things he’d seen, not so much the things he’d done. Which was fine, because he’d gone on to do plenty.

 

It felt wrong, that all those people, all those families, should have no justice. It felt horrible, to have them with him at all times, weighing down his soul, weighed against it. Steve didn’t see a way to save himself, however much he might wish the voices in his head would leave him alone. He’d reached his end a long time ago—and his life had been longer than it should have been, anyway, so what was the harm?

 

Steve saw no salvation for himself, but he could still be a catalyst for closure, for some people, and he thought that might be a better use for him.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“Steve!” James called, running up and catching onto Steve’s shoulder, stopping his moving. He looked up, and saw his destination; an NYPD station, of all places, though James supposed it would work as well as any place. He said nothing for a moment, catching his breath. “Steve, you can’t do this.”

 

Steve, for his part, didn’t even bother to explain himself, not the trace of guilt in sight, and no desperation, either; just resignation. “I have to, Bucky,” he said, almost sighed, voice hollow.

 

“No you don’t,” James said. “You just… Just— Come on,” he said, tugging on Steve’s shoulder and turning him away from the station.

 

Steve resisted the pull. “Buck—”

 

“No, look; I’m not trying to stop you, just… Take a walk. Come on. Look, if— If you want to come back here, after, fine, I won’t stop you, but…come on.”

 

Steve looked skeptical, but followed, and James knew it was only to humor him. They walked a long New York block, James leading them at a good clip with an arm around Steve’s shoulders. “They’ll crucify you, you know that, right?” he said brusquely. “Captain America or no.”

 

Steve said nothing.

 

“What, you want them to?”

 

“No,” Steve said, almost brooded, the _but I deserve it_ clearly present, if left behind.

 

“Then why?” James asked.

 

“What else, Bucky? What else am I supposed to do?”

 

“I don’t know—anything!” James answered.

 

“I have things I need to answer for, Buck,” Steve said, very nearly pleaded.

 

“But not like this! This—” James sighed. “The world is going on a witch-hunt, Steve. They’re shunning anyone that ever had anything to do with SHIELD, and going after anything that has anything to do with HYDRA. They’d tar and feather you, Steve, brainwashing or no—and it wasn’t even your fault—”

 

“Bucky,” Steve said, with the almost placating air of someone who didn’t want to have that conversation yet again.

 

“Fine! Fine. Fine.” James said nothing for a time, thinking of his next argument. “So you’re sure you want to do this, then?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You don’t want to wait? I mean, when I woke up, I was a mess, for a long time, and that was…tranquil, compared to this,” James said.

 

“Thanks,” Steve said sarcastically.

 

“I mean it.”

 

 “I was of sound mind when I made this decision, Bucky,” Steve said darkly.

 

“No, I know, but… Before you do something like this, Steve… There are other ways.”

 

“Like what?” Steve asked.

 

“I don’t know, just…wait.”

 

“Wait for what, Buck?” Steve said.

 

“Just…wait and see. Things could get better.”

 

“Really?” Steve asked, incredulous.

 

“Yeah. And, you can always go back later, you know. The police station isn’t going anywhere—and I meant it when I said I wouldn’t stop you. I just want you to…try other things first. Wait.”

 

“Wait for _what_?” Steve sighed, tired and defeated, leaving James wondering where his friend had gone, and whom the ghost standing next to him was. He had a moment of wondering if he was doing this for selfish reasons, but he dismissed the thought.

 

“Just…see if this works first,” James said, stopping and turning Steve to stand facing the line of buildings on their left. “Humor me.”

 

James watched as Steve stared at the church they stood in front of, eyes wide and jaw tightly closed, gaping a bit and clearly not expecting the curveball James hoped had the desired effect.

 

They stood in silence, watching the church, clearly older than most of the other buildings around it, but that showed no signs of giving out or refurbishing itself. James supposed there was a parallel in there somewhere.

 

“…Sarah would want you to,” he said eventually, because, though it was a bit of a low blow, he felt he needed to.

 

“Nice shot,” Steve said, mirroring James’ thoughts.

 

“I know, I’ve been saving it.”

 

“I’m sure you have,” Steve replied, something of a knowing tilt to his syllables.

 

Silence, again, save for the cacophony of New York streets that bubbled and roared around them, which never consented to attenuate, and likely never would; the geographical representation of the ‘fuck you’ that ran throughout most of its inhabitants, like a string of ethereal hope running through them all.

 

“…No one…ever said…that good people…can’t do bad things,” James said slowly, choosing his words with care. Steve’s eyes shifted up the building, settling on the cross that stood mounted on the steeple. “No one.”

 

 

 

 

FIN

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I'm sorry it took me so long to update. 
> 
> And second, thank you to whoever's taken the time to read this!


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